It has been nearly four years since I posted. I find that my intellectual center has shifted, and I have substantially less free time than in the previous two most intensive periods of posting, and yet I have, if anything, a greater need for a journal of my musings, if only for my own future reference. We'll see if there is any regularity here.
I recall one of the more striking epiphanies I had with aid from some poisonous mushrooms. It occurred to me that everyone was on drugs of some sort, and that there was a fundamental disconnect between them. Smokers exist in a different social and psychological mien than drinkers or potheads or whatever. The social, cultural, chemical aspects all reinforce each other in promoting a line of distinction between groups, as if there were separate tribes. Under the guidance of my mycological ally, these cultural distinctions condensed into almost visible streams of differing viscosity, spatial dimensions and currents. Drugs promote different paces of motion, types of thought and inclinations toward socialization. These interact and clash with the fluid norms and fixed rules of other overlapping social mien to create cultural pools.
Smokers exhibit gravitational attraction toward each other by the simple acts of bumming a cigarette or asking for a light. At the same time, they are actively repelled by non-smokers, who (in current social formations) are dominant in their demands for clean airspace. These attractions-repulsions push smokers to clumps on the perimeter of social and architectural spaces, which they cohabit - in their capacity as students, workers, tenants or whatever - with people who do not belong to their chemical tribe. There are reasons to believe that their chemical bonds are stronger descriptors of their nature than their occupational containers. Smokers are one type of reagent, they react in known ways to their bonding-pair object (cigarettes) that are modified to only a limited extent by the type of container they are in. Smoker and non-smoker engineers are silver nitrate and sodium hydroxide. The fact that they are both engineers is like saying the two chemicals are both in Erlenmeyer flasks. Smoker lawyers are silver nitrate in pipettes, the same compound in another container. Mixing smokers and non-smokers yields a brown precipitate, a clump of ash and tarry lungs that clumps on the sidewalk beside the exits.
Without going into further description of other drug tribes, suffice to say that this was mere background to my epiphany of this morning, aided by my new drug of choice (coffee). Incidentally, there are numerous studies calling the enlightenment, democracy, capitalism, modernity at large as the distinctive cultural formations of coffee. It strikes me that this is particularly true. The difference between coffee and tea cultures is perhaps more subtle than The Devil's Cup would have it, but there are differences nonetheless. Are the various caffeinated beverages subcultures of the same tribe? Admixtures of different elasticities? The shared chemical basis of coffee, tea, chocolate, guarana, yerba mate etc implies a history of different contexts for human-drug interaction, but also implies that there is something inherent in the human-plant symbiosis that demands stimulants (especially when we consider that adding ma huang [i.e. ephedrine] and coca implicates much of the subtropical and tropical world in supplying us with uppers). This demands further meditation.
Nonetheless, three further thoughts for future reference. First, the interaction between these substances and human society that produces the most notable cultural forms appear to occur when borders are crossed. In their native setting (if that can be constructed as such), coffee, tea et al do not stand out as rabble-rousers, catalysts or enemies of the state. It is when they encounter an unfamiliar cultural formation that you get things like cafes provoking the English Civil war and capitalism, or cocaine fueling the paradoxical 80s. This effect is strengthened by attempts at control and prohibition.
Second, food is not distinct from these impulses. Rice, corn, even avacados imply certain cultural formations when combined with certain social orders. These lead to a certain mutual dependance where it is hard to ascertain whether corn is controlling us or we are controlling corn (if that is even a meaningful distinction, debt to Michael Pollan as always). The critical factor here is that food and drugs are not merely memes that affect society at the intellectual/social level, comparatively confined to these levels and describable as infections of the social body. Because we ingest them, food and drugs are infections on the physical human body as well, in fact they often manifest as things we would more normally call diseases: everything from lung cancer to diabetes to beri-beri is implicated in the diet-culture-nature-nurture realm of drug interactions.
This is getting hard to keep clean, but if we think of food/drugs as infections on the social and physical body, it becomes hard to disentangle. Where is agency? Where is causation? Nonetheless, it is relatively clear that broad swaths of phenomena appear to be infectious through non-traditional disease vectors. We are used to thinking of infectious diseases as things like smallpox or malaria: transmitted human to human or some other host to human, the proximate vector being biological: a virus, bacterium, fungus, prion or whatever. But these infections have other determining factors - certain types of sociability and spatial factors, as well as genetics are associated with the susceptibility to (and therefore transmission patterns of) AIDS, chicken pox and malaria, to name a few. Can't we consider diabetes in a similar light? It has genetic factors for sure, but susceptibility is also closely associated with social patterns, and its proximate vector of transmission is chemical (sugar). Under this formulation, we should consider disease to be more than a physical disorder, it is also a social disorder, and an ecological disorder.
Thursday, November 18
Wednesday, January 3
New Years Reservations: Monkeys-riding-tigers will be Boys
Happy nineteen eighty-twenty-seven everybody!
Top news story of the year so far: kids are too excited about reading!
Now the time-honored tradition on the occasion of the New Year is to make resolutions to eat better, excercise more, be kinder to acquaintances, spend more time with family, focus on work, stop sweating the small stuff, pay attention to detail and other impractical, contradictory and cliched goals. These resolutions are then generally broken by, well, today. In any case, I have decided to explore the possibilities contained within this new leaf concept. My first assertion, based on little other than that last metaphor, is that resolutions might be best left for the spring. But that's a little too facile, so let's not short-circuit this before we get any lightbulbs.
My first thought, in terms of resolutions, was very much along the traditional diet-and-exercise lines. This type of resolution is a real John Travolta of a tripple-threat: it promises to extend your life, increase your health and energy now and give you something to bitch about with everyone else who is failing at their diet-and-exercise resolution. And if it ends up a flop some time after the fourth or fifth major feature, it promises to come back in a new and fatter iteration sometime down the line.
So let's hit up diet first. I'm already a failed vegitarian of some sort, so that's not really a new leaf so much as a slowly composting one. I thought about becoming a stronger sort of vegitarian, giving up eggs or dairy or both, especially after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which made commercial egg production sound much worse than I imagined. However, Michael Pollan also convinced me that veganism doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
His argument runs something like this: if everyone was a vegan, no cows, chickens etc would be raised, and because they cannot survive in the wild, they will go extinct. In other words, veganism evades the crime of killing an animal by committing the crime of extinting a species. There is a problem with this argument; a very big one. It falls pray to a universality fallicy. If everyone in the world was a vegan, chickens would probably go extinct because they don't make good pets and noone would be raising them for meat or eggs. However, if even 1% of the population continued to eat eggs and meat, they would continue to raise chickens and things would be fine. In any case, something like 4% of the population is vegitarian and something like 4% of them are vegan, so the problem of vegans causing the extinction of chickens is not imminent.
The stronger case against veganism, to my mind, is contained within Pollan's extinction argument, as well as other places in his book (which I strongly recommend, by the way, as long as you don't mind ruining McDo for yourself). It runs something like this: humans are naturally omnivores, this is evidenced by the facts that we have multi-function teeth, big brains and can't make vitamin B12 for ourselves. The case is presented that cows are generally healthier (both for themselves and for us to eat) when they are allowed to behave like cows rather than meat factories. Likewiswe with pigs. Likewise with grass (which works much better as a polyculture, even for the purpose of making ethanol). So it is fair to assume that humans are healthiest, and probably best for their environment, as omnivores. So long, that is, as they treat their cows like cows and their chickens like chickens and so on. That does not mean factory farming but it does mean farming: these species have evolved to the point where that is their natural environment. Things are healthiest when cows are allowed to be cows and humans are allowed to be humans.
Finally, there is the koala argument. Apparently koalas have a head that is much bigger than their brain, which means that they probably used to be omnivores and required a bigger brain, but now that they only eat eucalyptus, they have tiny little brains. So, while vegitarians are smarter, they are not smarter because they don't eat meat, they don't eat meat because they are smarter (they are also more likely to be female). So there is the possibility that over generations, vegans eating only corn and soy would develop smaller brains than omnivores and become sub-human. Then again, I doubt the intelligence of anyone who consumes only a few foods by choice.
So veganism is out. And I don't really need to loose weight, I'm more concerned with developing habits to prevent future weight gains, so I don't really need any extreme diets (btw, people on diets are more likely to be fat, but this again is a selection bias). So I decided my goal for this year is to cure myself of some of my eating-when-bored-or-tired habits. These include, but are not limited to, eating late at night, taking multiple helpings when I'm not really hungry and pretty much any time I eat cereal. My reading has also indicated to me that most cereals are pretty far from actually being food, so that seems like a good type of thing to cut out. I mean, grape nuts and bran flakes are fine, but anything with more than about six ingredients is probably just processed corn. So I decided to stop eating after 9 pm and stop taking multiple helpings at meals. This has the added benifit of meaning that I will be more genuinely hungry for snacks which, along with naps, are about the greatest invention ever. On a more emotional level, I've decided to encourage myself to enjoy that slightly hungry feeling.
Well, so far I've already broken both the 9 pm thing and the second helpings. Two nights ago I had about six slices of pizza between 9 and 11 for exactly the reasons I'm trying to avoid. Yesterday, I had too helpings of a dinner that really wasn't good enough to merit being over-full. So I'm 2 for 2 and it's been 2 days. Good start to the year.
I'm pretty good about exercise as well, so I'm not entirely sure how badly I need a resolution in this department. I've come to recognize the fact that I feel much better when I get out for a run or do some yoga, and I'm pretty good at getting in three or four days a week. I've gotten a little bit worse about stretching, which happens every winter (stretching cold is no fun and probably not great for your muscles anyway), plus I'm nursing a knee injury that makes some stretches unadvisable. But I would like to get back into my better flexability by the end of the spring. In fact, I'm starting to think that this sort of long-term goal may be a better idea for an exercise resolution. You know, something like I want to be able to run five miles in fourty minutes by the end of the year. So I'm thinking, in view of my tentative plans to do something hardass this summer that I want to be in good shape before I go rather than getting in shape along the way. That's pretty general and yet pretty specific. And doable. Maybe that's not such a good thing...
And of course, there are the other categories of resolutions. Get organized, be optimistic and such. For example, I might make a resolution to always post my blog on time. That seems like a pretty safe one, because I know I'll break it by the second month of the year. In fact, I'm starting to think that keeping a resolution might be more dangerous than breaking one.
See, apparently free will is somewhat of an illusion, something we construct for ourselves after the fact. We are monkeys riding tigers and coming up with justifications for where they go. If we keep our resolutions, doesn't that just mean that the monkey is becoming more convinced that he's actually in control? Sounds a little dangerous to me. I definately get the feeling that I'm being taken for a ride when, at 11 oclock I head for the third peice of cake. Also, we apparently remember regret better than we remember guilt. So maybe my resolution for the year is to enjoy the ride, the six peices of pizza and my monkey chagrin.
Top news story of the year so far: kids are too excited about reading!
Now the time-honored tradition on the occasion of the New Year is to make resolutions to eat better, excercise more, be kinder to acquaintances, spend more time with family, focus on work, stop sweating the small stuff, pay attention to detail and other impractical, contradictory and cliched goals. These resolutions are then generally broken by, well, today. In any case, I have decided to explore the possibilities contained within this new leaf concept. My first assertion, based on little other than that last metaphor, is that resolutions might be best left for the spring. But that's a little too facile, so let's not short-circuit this before we get any lightbulbs.
My first thought, in terms of resolutions, was very much along the traditional diet-and-exercise lines. This type of resolution is a real John Travolta of a tripple-threat: it promises to extend your life, increase your health and energy now and give you something to bitch about with everyone else who is failing at their diet-and-exercise resolution. And if it ends up a flop some time after the fourth or fifth major feature, it promises to come back in a new and fatter iteration sometime down the line.
So let's hit up diet first. I'm already a failed vegitarian of some sort, so that's not really a new leaf so much as a slowly composting one. I thought about becoming a stronger sort of vegitarian, giving up eggs or dairy or both, especially after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which made commercial egg production sound much worse than I imagined. However, Michael Pollan also convinced me that veganism doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
His argument runs something like this: if everyone was a vegan, no cows, chickens etc would be raised, and because they cannot survive in the wild, they will go extinct. In other words, veganism evades the crime of killing an animal by committing the crime of extinting a species. There is a problem with this argument; a very big one. It falls pray to a universality fallicy. If everyone in the world was a vegan, chickens would probably go extinct because they don't make good pets and noone would be raising them for meat or eggs. However, if even 1% of the population continued to eat eggs and meat, they would continue to raise chickens and things would be fine. In any case, something like 4% of the population is vegitarian and something like 4% of them are vegan, so the problem of vegans causing the extinction of chickens is not imminent.
The stronger case against veganism, to my mind, is contained within Pollan's extinction argument, as well as other places in his book (which I strongly recommend, by the way, as long as you don't mind ruining McDo for yourself). It runs something like this: humans are naturally omnivores, this is evidenced by the facts that we have multi-function teeth, big brains and can't make vitamin B12 for ourselves. The case is presented that cows are generally healthier (both for themselves and for us to eat) when they are allowed to behave like cows rather than meat factories. Likewiswe with pigs. Likewise with grass (which works much better as a polyculture, even for the purpose of making ethanol). So it is fair to assume that humans are healthiest, and probably best for their environment, as omnivores. So long, that is, as they treat their cows like cows and their chickens like chickens and so on. That does not mean factory farming but it does mean farming: these species have evolved to the point where that is their natural environment. Things are healthiest when cows are allowed to be cows and humans are allowed to be humans.
Finally, there is the koala argument. Apparently koalas have a head that is much bigger than their brain, which means that they probably used to be omnivores and required a bigger brain, but now that they only eat eucalyptus, they have tiny little brains. So, while vegitarians are smarter, they are not smarter because they don't eat meat, they don't eat meat because they are smarter (they are also more likely to be female). So there is the possibility that over generations, vegans eating only corn and soy would develop smaller brains than omnivores and become sub-human. Then again, I doubt the intelligence of anyone who consumes only a few foods by choice.
So veganism is out. And I don't really need to loose weight, I'm more concerned with developing habits to prevent future weight gains, so I don't really need any extreme diets (btw, people on diets are more likely to be fat, but this again is a selection bias). So I decided my goal for this year is to cure myself of some of my eating-when-bored-or-tired habits. These include, but are not limited to, eating late at night, taking multiple helpings when I'm not really hungry and pretty much any time I eat cereal. My reading has also indicated to me that most cereals are pretty far from actually being food, so that seems like a good type of thing to cut out. I mean, grape nuts and bran flakes are fine, but anything with more than about six ingredients is probably just processed corn. So I decided to stop eating after 9 pm and stop taking multiple helpings at meals. This has the added benifit of meaning that I will be more genuinely hungry for snacks which, along with naps, are about the greatest invention ever. On a more emotional level, I've decided to encourage myself to enjoy that slightly hungry feeling.
Well, so far I've already broken both the 9 pm thing and the second helpings. Two nights ago I had about six slices of pizza between 9 and 11 for exactly the reasons I'm trying to avoid. Yesterday, I had too helpings of a dinner that really wasn't good enough to merit being over-full. So I'm 2 for 2 and it's been 2 days. Good start to the year.
I'm pretty good about exercise as well, so I'm not entirely sure how badly I need a resolution in this department. I've come to recognize the fact that I feel much better when I get out for a run or do some yoga, and I'm pretty good at getting in three or four days a week. I've gotten a little bit worse about stretching, which happens every winter (stretching cold is no fun and probably not great for your muscles anyway), plus I'm nursing a knee injury that makes some stretches unadvisable. But I would like to get back into my better flexability by the end of the spring. In fact, I'm starting to think that this sort of long-term goal may be a better idea for an exercise resolution. You know, something like I want to be able to run five miles in fourty minutes by the end of the year. So I'm thinking, in view of my tentative plans to do something hardass this summer that I want to be in good shape before I go rather than getting in shape along the way. That's pretty general and yet pretty specific. And doable. Maybe that's not such a good thing...
And of course, there are the other categories of resolutions. Get organized, be optimistic and such. For example, I might make a resolution to always post my blog on time. That seems like a pretty safe one, because I know I'll break it by the second month of the year. In fact, I'm starting to think that keeping a resolution might be more dangerous than breaking one.
See, apparently free will is somewhat of an illusion, something we construct for ourselves after the fact. We are monkeys riding tigers and coming up with justifications for where they go. If we keep our resolutions, doesn't that just mean that the monkey is becoming more convinced that he's actually in control? Sounds a little dangerous to me. I definately get the feeling that I'm being taken for a ride when, at 11 oclock I head for the third peice of cake. Also, we apparently remember regret better than we remember guilt. So maybe my resolution for the year is to enjoy the ride, the six peices of pizza and my monkey chagrin.
Wednesday, December 20
Writing in the Margins
Some things that I wonder about:
-We are often disgusted by the sight of urban blight, functionally ugly construction, coal and oil smoke, rusting automobiles. It seems like we find old-but-not-yet-outdated technology as the prime example of the ugly and polluting aspects of our urban environment. Shiny new technology is exempt until it's not so new. More interestingly, truly old technology is exempt as well. We consider things like water mills, early machinery, wood stoves and the like quaint. But consider, there was a time when these were cutting-edge technology. There was also, therefore, a time when they were becoming increasingly marginalized technology, but had not yet dissapeared. Were they considered unsightly and polluting? Going further back, was there a time when log cabins were a shiny new technology and mud huts seemed a blight on the landscape? Or is this perspectieve a product of modernity?
-It seems to met that the greatest innovations, the ones the represent real leaps forward rather than incrimental steps, come from the margins of society more than the professional innovators. Apple computers present a very interesting perspective on this. When Steve Jobs and the Woz were putting together machines in their garrage, they were cutting edge, then when Mac's were at the height of their popularity, they ceased to be making much in the way of innovation and then, after nearly failing, they returned to the forefront of innovation. Another way to look at this is that highly chaotic times present the impetus for real novel ideas. The warring states, for example, was a relatively chaotic period in China; it is also when the most formative philosphies took root, including Daoism and Confusionism as well as the ultimately less sucessful Moism, Legalism and some others. This is, of course, all anecdotal; I could very easily be pulling out only the examples that support my thesis. Something worth exploring, although I wonder how that might be done....
-Under the assumption that margins are where the most interesting ideas come from, where are the best places to look for innovation? Here are some that I've been thinking about: the megaslums forming around major cities in the developing world (notably, these will soon hold the majority of the world population), the drug trade, areas struck hard by the AIDS epidemic, failed states, prisons. In some cases, there may be too many externalities, or the situation may be entirely too marginal. In other cases, the innovations may be a little or no practical use outside of the situation in which they arise, or may be destructive in nature. In particular, consdier that terrorism and the manipulation of the UN and the international community represent major innovations in managing conflicts across massive power differentials. Some other things we've heard a lot about, microfinance being a prime example, came out of megaslums. If I were a major investment agency, that is where I'd put a lot of focus.
-Increasingly, the indication seems to be that large groups of people are better at making solutions than elites. Even though those people may individually be idiots, in aggregate, they make better decisions than highly intelligent and educated elites. Maybe. Mom got me a book on this that I haven't had the chance to read yet. My observation: masses of people are better at voting on things indirectly or when there is a clear outcome. For example, buying things is essentially a vote. Another example might be American Idol: zombie Americans with nothing better to do than watch reality TV seem to do a pretty good job of choosing sucessful singers. Then again, this should almost be a truism, because the measure a a singer's sucess is preetty much based on how many peopel like them. But maybe what we need is more direct democracy. Why not run voting issues on TV or internet-based applets that have a panel of experts to help people see the different sides of the issue and then let them decide. One of the major disadvantages, that interested people are more likely to vote, doesn't nessisarily seem like such a disadvantage. Voting fraud might be, but then again, it already is.
-We are often disgusted by the sight of urban blight, functionally ugly construction, coal and oil smoke, rusting automobiles. It seems like we find old-but-not-yet-outdated technology as the prime example of the ugly and polluting aspects of our urban environment. Shiny new technology is exempt until it's not so new. More interestingly, truly old technology is exempt as well. We consider things like water mills, early machinery, wood stoves and the like quaint. But consider, there was a time when these were cutting-edge technology. There was also, therefore, a time when they were becoming increasingly marginalized technology, but had not yet dissapeared. Were they considered unsightly and polluting? Going further back, was there a time when log cabins were a shiny new technology and mud huts seemed a blight on the landscape? Or is this perspectieve a product of modernity?
-It seems to met that the greatest innovations, the ones the represent real leaps forward rather than incrimental steps, come from the margins of society more than the professional innovators. Apple computers present a very interesting perspective on this. When Steve Jobs and the Woz were putting together machines in their garrage, they were cutting edge, then when Mac's were at the height of their popularity, they ceased to be making much in the way of innovation and then, after nearly failing, they returned to the forefront of innovation. Another way to look at this is that highly chaotic times present the impetus for real novel ideas. The warring states, for example, was a relatively chaotic period in China; it is also when the most formative philosphies took root, including Daoism and Confusionism as well as the ultimately less sucessful Moism, Legalism and some others. This is, of course, all anecdotal; I could very easily be pulling out only the examples that support my thesis. Something worth exploring, although I wonder how that might be done....
-Under the assumption that margins are where the most interesting ideas come from, where are the best places to look for innovation? Here are some that I've been thinking about: the megaslums forming around major cities in the developing world (notably, these will soon hold the majority of the world population), the drug trade, areas struck hard by the AIDS epidemic, failed states, prisons. In some cases, there may be too many externalities, or the situation may be entirely too marginal. In other cases, the innovations may be a little or no practical use outside of the situation in which they arise, or may be destructive in nature. In particular, consdier that terrorism and the manipulation of the UN and the international community represent major innovations in managing conflicts across massive power differentials. Some other things we've heard a lot about, microfinance being a prime example, came out of megaslums. If I were a major investment agency, that is where I'd put a lot of focus.
-Increasingly, the indication seems to be that large groups of people are better at making solutions than elites. Even though those people may individually be idiots, in aggregate, they make better decisions than highly intelligent and educated elites. Maybe. Mom got me a book on this that I haven't had the chance to read yet. My observation: masses of people are better at voting on things indirectly or when there is a clear outcome. For example, buying things is essentially a vote. Another example might be American Idol: zombie Americans with nothing better to do than watch reality TV seem to do a pretty good job of choosing sucessful singers. Then again, this should almost be a truism, because the measure a a singer's sucess is preetty much based on how many peopel like them. But maybe what we need is more direct democracy. Why not run voting issues on TV or internet-based applets that have a panel of experts to help people see the different sides of the issue and then let them decide. One of the major disadvantages, that interested people are more likely to vote, doesn't nessisarily seem like such a disadvantage. Voting fraud might be, but then again, it already is.
Saturday, December 16
The Sick Ness Monster
Through some combination of illness, laziness, unwilingness and Blogger-not-working...um...ness has lead me to miss two weeks of posting. In the meantime, I'm a year older and wiser (perhaps) and I've had a chance to find at least one more job. It looks like I will be doing an internship at the Philadelphia DA's office, working at ABC and probably selling sandwiches at Panera. I'm planning on helping in Taiko class some more as well, so it should be a pretty full schedule. Oh, I also redid the look of the blog, let me know if you like it.
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the possibility that market solutions are actually better at resolving environmental concerns than all the government intervention going on. Clearly there are going to be some environmental problems that are not well addressed with market solutions, but it is interesting to see the degree to which my knee-jerk socialist let-the-government-regulate-it attitude seems very problematic for soem of these concerns. For example, public ownership of forests and fisheries tends to lead to the Tragedy of the Commons. Because the governement owns the land and sells rights to its use for a duration, the incentive is to maximize the profit during that period by clear-cutting as much as possible. On the other hand, private ownership of forest lands gives the lumber interests long-term incentives to maintain the forests for future cutting. In fact, in parts of the world where this model is followed, forests are actually regrowing. Fisheries are more problematic because the issue of fishing rights is more tangled by the simple fact that fish do not have roots.
Other problems, including preservation and restoration of endangered species and supplying clean water to populations in the developing world seem to suggest the feasablity of capitalist solutions. In many cases, regulations and fines are incentives to avoid compliance or avoid the industry all-together where these are problems that really want addressing.
Energy and air pollution (and corresponding ozone damage) are more difficult issues for a variety of reasons. Even solid waste appears to offer the potential for profitable and environmentally friendly businesses. For example, organic waste may be a good potential input for the manufacture of thermal insulation. Imagine the possibility of a company being payed to manage the waste of other industries (and potentially of the residential sector) and turning this into low-cost insulation (subsidised by the industries that produced the waste) which in turn reduces heating and cooling costs. Inorganic waste (especially metals) is profitable to recycle. There is some clear danger of wealthy countries essentially exporting all their garbage to the developing world, but at least there is the potential for clever recyling developments.
The problem with air pollution is that its effect is not recognized in a given local to a strong enough degree to deincentivise a given producer. Compound this with the fact that most of the world's air pollution comes from difficult sources to manage. Some libertarians have theorized a system wherein polluters can buy and sell the right to a certain amount of air pollution. First of all, notice that this still preassumes a certain degree of government control (or control by some other public proxy, such as a business bureau), which creates the same sort of potential for cheating. But even if this solves the big polluter problem to a degree by creating the incentive to pollute less and thereby profit from selling pollution rights, it does not solve the problem of diffuse sources of air pollution, which are the bigger issue to begin with. In most of the world, diffuse sources of air pollution are the source of more pollution than the point sources to begin with. In the developed world, these sources are mostly things like private cars and homes burning oil for heat and power. In the developing and nondeveloping world, these are mostly things like coal and wood burnt for cooking and heating purposes. The role of livestock is not to be underestimated either. Apparently in New Zealand, sheep and cattle farming are among the most significant sources of pollution. Furthermore, the damage to the ozone layer is caused by all these polluters in agrigate, which makes it very hard to incentivise individuals.
In any case, just thought these are some interesting things to think about. Also, Green Wombat is a pretty interesting source of info on these enivirocapitalism trends.
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the possibility that market solutions are actually better at resolving environmental concerns than all the government intervention going on. Clearly there are going to be some environmental problems that are not well addressed with market solutions, but it is interesting to see the degree to which my knee-jerk socialist let-the-government-regulate-it attitude seems very problematic for soem of these concerns. For example, public ownership of forests and fisheries tends to lead to the Tragedy of the Commons. Because the governement owns the land and sells rights to its use for a duration, the incentive is to maximize the profit during that period by clear-cutting as much as possible. On the other hand, private ownership of forest lands gives the lumber interests long-term incentives to maintain the forests for future cutting. In fact, in parts of the world where this model is followed, forests are actually regrowing. Fisheries are more problematic because the issue of fishing rights is more tangled by the simple fact that fish do not have roots.
Other problems, including preservation and restoration of endangered species and supplying clean water to populations in the developing world seem to suggest the feasablity of capitalist solutions. In many cases, regulations and fines are incentives to avoid compliance or avoid the industry all-together where these are problems that really want addressing.
Energy and air pollution (and corresponding ozone damage) are more difficult issues for a variety of reasons. Even solid waste appears to offer the potential for profitable and environmentally friendly businesses. For example, organic waste may be a good potential input for the manufacture of thermal insulation. Imagine the possibility of a company being payed to manage the waste of other industries (and potentially of the residential sector) and turning this into low-cost insulation (subsidised by the industries that produced the waste) which in turn reduces heating and cooling costs. Inorganic waste (especially metals) is profitable to recycle. There is some clear danger of wealthy countries essentially exporting all their garbage to the developing world, but at least there is the potential for clever recyling developments.
The problem with air pollution is that its effect is not recognized in a given local to a strong enough degree to deincentivise a given producer. Compound this with the fact that most of the world's air pollution comes from difficult sources to manage. Some libertarians have theorized a system wherein polluters can buy and sell the right to a certain amount of air pollution. First of all, notice that this still preassumes a certain degree of government control (or control by some other public proxy, such as a business bureau), which creates the same sort of potential for cheating. But even if this solves the big polluter problem to a degree by creating the incentive to pollute less and thereby profit from selling pollution rights, it does not solve the problem of diffuse sources of air pollution, which are the bigger issue to begin with. In most of the world, diffuse sources of air pollution are the source of more pollution than the point sources to begin with. In the developed world, these sources are mostly things like private cars and homes burning oil for heat and power. In the developing and nondeveloping world, these are mostly things like coal and wood burnt for cooking and heating purposes. The role of livestock is not to be underestimated either. Apparently in New Zealand, sheep and cattle farming are among the most significant sources of pollution. Furthermore, the damage to the ozone layer is caused by all these polluters in agrigate, which makes it very hard to incentivise individuals.
In any case, just thought these are some interesting things to think about. Also, Green Wombat is a pretty interesting source of info on these enivirocapitalism trends.
Tuesday, November 21
Animal Farm Animals
Perhaps I was a bit too harsh to feminists, products of time as I am of mine. My romantic spleen longs for true groundswells of change, and I am angered by partisan politics and the some at the expense of some. Perhaps if I wax choleric I will prompt responses in kind, and who does not love kind responses and flamewars.
Maybe it is just that my frame of mind is dependant on that impossible blank slate. Bring me an eraser. Oh to be young in a young country! Give me destiny and an open frontier and I'll do my best Jefforson. It is only amidst concrete walls and decay that we must act the Lenins of the world, or the Stalins. If an age of I-beams demands men of steel I should be unsurprised that a copper-wire century creates bronze and calculating change.
The Thanksgiving season is on us. A season for gorging on turkey, tripping on triptophan and falling asleep in front of the football game. Thanksgiving was once the celebration of survival and a fresh chance in a firewashed land. All it took was the accidental genocide of a thousand peoples (and the calculated genocide of a thousand more) to give us two or three centuries of frontier. What is the new frontier? It took less than a decade for the digital prarie to become corn-growing land. Is space that final frontier? I think not in my generation.
The Jefforsonian ideal is predicated on indpendant incomes. The Friedanian ideal is predicated on independant incomes. The difficulty is that we now live in a society with no real frontier, where jobs are the product of amorphous corporates and bureacracy. Working outside the home gives a woman independance from her husband, but not full freedom. Dependance is merely shifted from one employer to another. Under the market economy, we are all dependants on the cheifs of industry; our corporate fathers take home the lions share of the bacon while we are left to clean the slaughterhouse.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, perhaps farms are the answer. If vegitarianism was mandated, or at least meat made a luxury, corporate farms would not be so requisite. Less land is needed for crops if they are eaten before being processed through the meat machine. More land could be left fallow for prarie or woodlands. Water rights would be less problematic in the West. We could hunt for pleasure and for the occasional meat, but grow most food on local farms. Urban areas could set up empty lots for community vegetable plots. A small slice of farm is a great fall-back for lean times. At the same time, because we are so connected through the interwaves of the wired aether, we could remain connected and continue the majority of jobs from localities.
This is a dream. We are the products of our time, and this type of sea change would require a generation of pigs who had not known farmers to stand on their hind legs.
Maybe it is just that my frame of mind is dependant on that impossible blank slate. Bring me an eraser. Oh to be young in a young country! Give me destiny and an open frontier and I'll do my best Jefforson. It is only amidst concrete walls and decay that we must act the Lenins of the world, or the Stalins. If an age of I-beams demands men of steel I should be unsurprised that a copper-wire century creates bronze and calculating change.
The Thanksgiving season is on us. A season for gorging on turkey, tripping on triptophan and falling asleep in front of the football game. Thanksgiving was once the celebration of survival and a fresh chance in a firewashed land. All it took was the accidental genocide of a thousand peoples (and the calculated genocide of a thousand more) to give us two or three centuries of frontier. What is the new frontier? It took less than a decade for the digital prarie to become corn-growing land. Is space that final frontier? I think not in my generation.
The Jefforsonian ideal is predicated on indpendant incomes. The Friedanian ideal is predicated on independant incomes. The difficulty is that we now live in a society with no real frontier, where jobs are the product of amorphous corporates and bureacracy. Working outside the home gives a woman independance from her husband, but not full freedom. Dependance is merely shifted from one employer to another. Under the market economy, we are all dependants on the cheifs of industry; our corporate fathers take home the lions share of the bacon while we are left to clean the slaughterhouse.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, perhaps farms are the answer. If vegitarianism was mandated, or at least meat made a luxury, corporate farms would not be so requisite. Less land is needed for crops if they are eaten before being processed through the meat machine. More land could be left fallow for prarie or woodlands. Water rights would be less problematic in the West. We could hunt for pleasure and for the occasional meat, but grow most food on local farms. Urban areas could set up empty lots for community vegetable plots. A small slice of farm is a great fall-back for lean times. At the same time, because we are so connected through the interwaves of the wired aether, we could remain connected and continue the majority of jobs from localities.
This is a dream. We are the products of our time, and this type of sea change would require a generation of pigs who had not known farmers to stand on their hind legs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)