Planned Obsolescence = Planned Rape of the Planet

Ever since the early 1920s manufacturers have been ‘improving’ light bulbs so that they only last 1000 hours. Prior to that time they already lasted over 2000 hours, but the Phoebus international cartel heavily fined any member producer that made bulbs lasting too long.

In East Germany, prior to the wall coming down, the local factories made bulbs lasting over 2500 hours. But immediately after reunification, the factories were closed down as being too efficient for the rest of the world. The lightbulb in the Livermore fire station has been on for more than 110 years. It has its own website so you can watch it, and as a matter of interest – it is on its fourth web cam!

Along similar lines is the story of ink jet printers that completely stop working when their waste ink reservoir is full. If you just empty it (assuming you can find it), quite often that doesn’t solve the problem, because it is actually a chip counting pages that has reached its limit, and effectively turns the printer off. When you take your printer to the service desk, their recommended solution is to buy a new printer. This is not mechanical failure because the unit still works perfectly. This is computerised failure where a chip controls whether the unit can remain in use or not, regardless of its mechanical condition. The manufacturer simply wants to sell you a new one

http://www.apfelkraut.org/2011/03/the-untold-story-of-planned-obsolescence/

Serge Latouche asks if we really need planned growth – ie each of us buying more stuff every year. The natural growth of increased population buying the same amount per person every year should be sufficient economical growth.

Products are being designed to stop working after a certain amount of use. So old, perfectly useable products are thrown away. They are often illegally dumped in third world countries – described as second hand products! The world then has to deal with the environmental pollution of the dumped article, and the resource consumption to produce a new one.

The future of the planet is being sacrificed on the altar of short term corporate profits.

Greed Destroys Hope for the Planet

There is a great idea in Paris to have a fleet of electric cars available for anybody to rent.

It is described in this article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10756288

This should allow Paris to reduce parking congestion, reduce chemical pollution, reduce noise pollution, and reduce the consumption of scarce resources required to build cars for everybody.

However at the bottom of the article we find the problem. Instead of allowing this great idea to set a benchmark for cities to improve their quality of life and conservation credibility, two parties are vehemently opposed: taxi drivers and rental car companies. They are opposed for purely selfish reasons – they will lose money!

Instead of just opposing this, they should look for new opportunities – the electric cars are short distance only, so both taxis and rentals could focus on long distance possibilities; the electric car stations are not on everyone’s front door – people will still need taxis to get to them; and at four seats, they will never get the lads out to the party together.

But instead of planning on future strategies in a changing world, these two groups have just shouted – give us back the past where we made lots of profit, bugger the planet.

Biofuel to Destroy the Environment

Isn’t it interesting that nothing is ever 100% green, or 100% bad for the environment. The recycling factories consume enormous resources to turn our rubbish into something useful. Electric cars will cause a huge drain on power infrastructure, and probably require more coal fired power stations to remain in service than would otherwise be the case.

And so it is with the wonder petrol substitutes – Palm Oil and Ethanol.

Companies that produce palm oil are stealing large areas of land, usually rainforest, from the indigenous residents, cutting and selling the trees, planting the palm oil trees, and selling the produce internationally. The locals get no land, no livelihood, and any oil they want to buy is at international prices, which of course they cannot afford. The corrupt government of the major palm oil exporting country, Indonesia, is protecting the exporting companies so that the locals with the legal rights have no means of enforcing them, or even of being heard.

We know that Ethanol comes from agricultural products. But what we don’t know is that it generally comes from a crop that otherwise the human race would consume as food – corn. So instead of eating it, we are pouring it into our cars. No big deal, until you remember that probably half the world is living on subsistence level diets. Now what little food they did get, suddenly doubled in price or has disappeared altogether.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of the board at Nestle, reported the same issues:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10714537

Meanwhile in developed countries taxpayers are funding the growth in biofuel use, supporting car manufacturers to improve engines and fuel infrastructure, subsidising pump prices, and generally encouraging the behaviour of the palm oil and ethanol producers. When they are asked, the governments respond with: ‘it’s not our problem, that is what the market wants’. Well of course that is what the market wants, because that is where the governments are throwing the money. Auto and oil companies have never been shy in chasing government subsidies! Car companies will never take the lead in making changes, they have to be forced, kicking & screaming, away from the trough of public funding.

The latest tactic to hide the problem is to change the label of palm oil from ‘bio’ or ‘eco’ fuel, to ‘agro’ fuel. Perhaps this will make the problem go away?

I know that Biofuel is not the answer, but so far my only solution is to walk.

Information Overload

We continually hear people say that they don’t have time to do the things they want to anymore. Self-made gurus make a small fortune out of ‘teaching’ us how to make the most of our time, how to prioritise and focus to achieve maximum return for our energy. However most of us should not need this woolly mumbo jumbo that they drown us with.

If we step back a little and compare our lives to the lives our parents lived, the obvious difference is information. The world today expects that we are intimately interested in an airport strike 8 time-zones away, that we have to know about the price of bananas in Ecuador, that a farmers’ protest in France has a direct impact on our lives. The world is wrong – we don’t NEED to know any of this information.

Humanity has survived quite well over the last few millennia with local knowledge only, and some global information filtering in slowly. But now we are told that we must keep up, find out, follow what is going on – everywhere, on every topic, right now! Whole industries have been set up to gather obscure, irrelevant information and pour it out of our TV screens and along our internet cables. Why do the numbers of media representatives watching & recording any conflict often outnumber the actual participants in the conflict? Because they seem to think that it is important that the rest of the world know whether some Afghan warlord is picking his nose or not.

When we look at our lives and try to find more time for ourselves, we seem to find that there are no optional activities for us to cut out. We have to read the newspaper, we have to watch the TV series on exploring the upper Guyana river systems looking for new animal species, we have to work out what impact the increased price of Australian copper will have on our mortgage interest rate. We have to take in all this information, process it and act on it. And work out whether yesterday’s actions were the right ones. And forecast what is going to happen tomorrow that we need to prepare for.

No wonder we have no time left for ourselves – to go hiking, read a good book, play with our children, improve our relationship with our partners, to smell the flowers. All these things must take a back seat to dealing with the information overload.

All of this leads into the next step on our downward spin – having to deal with the mental and health fallout of not managing the information processing. The ‘diseases’ such as depression, stress, ADHD, nervous breakdowns, are all modern symptoms of not dealing with the reality as the world expects us to. These diseases have only appeared in the last half-century or so when the flow of information really started to explode.

I wonder – should I package this lot up into a book and sell it? I could retire early, and spend some more time on myself!!

Strikes for Pensions Are Proof of Stupidity

How often do we have to put up with this stupid issue.

People who go on strike because they want to preserve or increase their pensions have got their heads buried so far in the sand that, with a little more digging, they could surface in the Australian outback. Although not even the Aboriginals would appreciate these idiots surfacing and looking for somebody to pay for their retirement in the sun.

The reason that governments are decreasing the pension allowances and raising the eligibility age, is because there is no money left to pay for the current level of benefit. Already the French pension deficit is over $14B. Governments can not continue to increase their borrowings every year just so that citizens can retire on full, inflation adjusted, allowances from the age of 55. Which bank would you go to in order to fund your overdraft of $14B, in the full knowledge that the amount will only increase, and rapidly?

Money is lent in the expectation of getting a return. What is the return in increasing the French pensions? Nothing, there is no benefit to anyone else. So who do the French think is going to stump up with the money to fund their good life? They certainly are not volunteering to pay for it with increased taxes now. Perhaps a Fairy Godmother will come to the rescue? If they do find a Fairy Godmother to pay for this stupidity, they better keep quiet, because the French are not the only country that is trying to create pension funds out of thin air. The Greeks, Italians and Spanish are all trying to work the same miracle.

Pensions were fine when there was only 10% – 15% of the population in retirement. Then the taxes of the other 85% could support the pensioners. Now that the equation has significantly moved the wrong way, how will the remaining 40% of the population who are still working ever pay enough taxes to support the pensions of the other 60% who want to live the easy life at someone else’s expense?

And yet that 40% is the sector of the French society that is currently striking for higher pensions!

They are not paying enough for the current pensions, so how does a strike enable them to pay for higher pensions in the future!!!

People need to use some common sense and prepare themselves rather than expect the government to provide all they need in the future:

http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/personal-responsibility/

Pensions are a gift from the current workforce to the previous workforce. They are not the right of future retirees. Going on strike for more pension is like Jesus feeding the 5000 from a basket of bread and fish. I’d rather look to my own bank account, than wait for that sort of miracle.

Strikes Cause Grief Without Solving Anything

The mentality behind strikes is pure greed. The workers are saying: “I demand more than you are willing to pay me.”

The workers are completely missing the basic law of Supply & Demand.

This says that if the supply is high relative to the demand, then the price must drop. And vice-versa, if the supply is low while the demand is high, then the price will be high. There is only one Rolling Stones in the world, so if you want to see them, you have to pay the price they charge. But every church has its own choir, so the price a church choir can charge to see them perform is much lower. Likewise in the labour markets, the price a company has to pay to secure someone of say, Richard Branson’s skills is quite high, while they can pay much less to secure the services of a ditch-digger.

So the basic precepts of a strike only really works in a growing economy. If the demand for workers is increasing, then unions can make employers realise they have to pay more to get the staff they need. If no worker accepts what is offered, then it is obvious that the employer will have to increase the offer because there is a limited supply of cheap labour. However if there are more workers available, then why shouldn’t the employers pay less money. In the long run, striking in a recession causes grief only to the end consumer – disruption to services and higher prices when their own wages may well be dropping. However in a growing economy, a strike can improve the situation – more money comes to the workers, they are happier, so their service to the end customer improves.

One aspect of the current recession that everyone is aware of is the level of redundancies as companies have cut their work force in order to save money. Now all of these newly redundant workers are available to work somewhere else. In this environment, you should be happy that someone is willing to pay you at all, not going on strike to demand more.

So get off your backsides, and clear your pickets lines – get back to the job that you are lucky to have, while you still have it, and stop causing unnecessary grief to the rest of us.

Who Gets to Go on Parade

Have you ever wondered what it is about parades and military forces?

Every time a country wants to celebrate something – May Day in Russia, 60 years of oppression in China, that sort of thing, then the country organises a parade showing off their military goodies.

The reason for a parade in the first place is to celebrate something. But who should be doing the partying – the citizens or those in power? From the look of the parades these days, it must be the government, and they don’t really care whether the people enjoy the resulting spectacle or not. “We are celebrating our achievement with this parade which you will enjoy” would be the common sentiment of the typical organiser! I can’t imagine that the average office worker or open-minded citizen would get too many kicks watching a lot of jack-booted soldiers thumping down the street.

If sporting a good-looking uniform is the criteria for putting on a show for the public, then perhaps the police (same as the military in some countries) or some firefighters could do just as well. If the criteria is that being a government employee is all that is necessary, why not send a few civil servants down the street instead. Pretty much guarantees a good show, although the bureaucrats on parade might not enjoy it quite as much as the rest of us would! If it was left up to the private sector to organise, then I think we could see quite a few improvements. Those selected for their uniforms could be air hostesses, or comely nurses. And I’m sure some marching girls would be able to keep good step to entertain us. The ladies would probably enjoy the talents of some fitness instructors being paraded down the street. I’m sure you get the idea.

So why is it that the military always get the nod to intimidate us with their image of might?

A little more creative thinking in the planning of a parade would ensure that all the citizens would be able to celebrate just as much as the country’s rulers.

The EU Capitulates to the Farmers, Again!!

So much for my hope that the EU had worked out a direction that would finally end the practice of pouring endless supplies of money into the bottomless pit that is Agriculture subsidies. http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/eu-common-agricultural-policy/

French farmers have yet again thrown their weight (and a fair few eggs) around Brussels, and walked away with more of our taxpayer funds.

They claim that because governments have bailed out failing banks, they should be bailed out as well. Thrown out is what they deserve! They still expect us the taxpayer to fund their lifestyle, while they continue to build more butter mountains, or milk lakes, or whatever it is that is the current surplus product.

Its called a free market for a reason. If we want it, we’ll buy it. If we don’t like the price one supplier sets, we’ll go elsewhere to get what we need. The farmers can then adjust their prices or live with the consequences of funding an expensive lifestyle from one paddock of produce. Why should consumers pay more just to keep the farmers going on uneconomic production units. They need to look at their own cost structure before they can get another handout.

Banks were forced to look at their bonus culture when the governments saved them, so the farmers should expect the same sort of treatment. As UK Farming Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said – more subsidies are not acceptable if it leads to paying for production that nobody wants (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8289976.stm).

When will we get some politicians in Brussels with the guts to take the right course for all of us, not just kowtowing to a select, obnoxious, minority.

Humanity vs Nature

We often hear stories these days about how humanity is hard done by – on the receiving end of some sort of natural disaster or bad luck from nature. This can take the form of wild animal attacks on humans or domestic animals, flooding or droughts, and so on.

We should stop for a minute and really look at these stories to understand what has changed recently to cause the current conflict. Has there been some alteration in nature’s patterns, have the animals decided to take different migration routes or change their diets?

In every case you will find that this is not the case. Nature is just doing what it has been doing for millennia. The change has come from humanity.

The examples are many and varied – from Brazil to Bangladesh, to Australia.

In Brazil farmers are illegally burning down the Amazon rainforest. Then they move in with vast herds of cattle. And then they start complaining that the jaguar population is taking an interest in their livestock. Well why not!!! The jaguars were there first, they eat meat, and if the farmers provide animals that don’t run away fast enough – Lunchtime!

The farmers have got absolutely no grounds for complaint. The land is part of the jaguars’ hunting range, they have been there for thousands of years, and certainly will not be fenced out. If the farmers don’t like it, they can go back to where they came from, or learn to live with nature.

Living on a riverbank that gets flooded every year does not make much sense. In Bangladesh the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers having been rising and falling like clockwork with the annual monsoons. But in the last decade or so the locals started complaining that the floods were higher, lasted longer and occurred more frequently, and now someone else has to start protecting them with flood banks and the like.

How about looking a little way upstream instead! Ask who is sitting there and you will see 1000′s of people wandering around chopping down trees to use them for cooking fires! Why should we rush to try and help someone when the problem is only getting worse? Get back in the hills and get the trees planted again. That’s what ameliorates the floods, not big piles of sand and concrete everywhere.

There have been a number of severe bush fires across the south east of Australia in the last few years, and people are moaning about the bush management regime that the councils are running. Well the councils are trying to leave it to nature as much as they can, and they are actually doing a reasonably good job. So what is causing the increased fires?

How about looking at the ground and the bush – it’s a lot dryer than it used to be. A drought perhaps? Or then again perhaps it is the fact that the lifestyle of the population is sucking a lot more water out of the ground than it used to. There are more swimming pools, the population is spreading into dryer areas, and still want their green grass and pretty flowers, and agriculture is getting more intensive and water dependant. It all adds up to a lot more water coming out of the ground than is going back in.

So perhaps if the water was managed with a little more restraint than the current free-for-all draining of the trough, then there might be a little more left over for nature to keep itself green and less prone to going up in a puff of smoke.

So in every Humanity vs Nature story, we really need to look at Humanity’s behaviour before we run around bleating about how we get the raw end of the stick from nature.

Middle East Peace? Not if Israel Has Their Way!

Yet again Israel hangs it’s violent, racist, fanatical and inflexible pedigree out in public.

On the one hand they are not prepared to slow down their illegal settlement activities while they negotiate for peace with Palestine. And on the other they continue to destroy all areas of Palestinian life.

They plan to build almost 1500 new houses in one of the West Bank settlements, using the relocation of 50 families from elsewhere as justification, taking control of more Palestinian land in the process. This almost sounds the same as what Mugabe did by taking possession of white farmers’ land in Zimbabwe – at least as violent and illegal. So why doesn’t Israel get the same attention and condemnation that Mugabe’s regime did? I’ve said it before (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/axes-of-evil/), and I say it again here.

Israel are obviously not prepared to let the peace negotiations proceed without substantially shifting the goalposts in their own favour using every means possible.

Meanwhile the borders to Palestine are kept closed, even to medical supplies and basic childcare requirements. These are not the actions of a country striving for peace. Clearly Israel has no humanitarian outlook, and takes no care to avoid unnecessary harm to innocent civilians. It has prejudged all Palestinians as terrorists, treating them as such, when all the Palestinians are trying to do is survive from day to day. This is exactly what the Jewish people endured prior to the creation of Israel as a country. And now the Jewish state takes revenge by brutalizing someone smaller than themselves.

All it would take to calm the situation down, to end the violence, the persecution of civilians is one thing: for Israel to stop what they are doing. I am not advocating a permanent cessation of all activities vis-à-vis the Palestinians and their land, just stop. Now. And start talking.

The basic fact about violence is that it needs two sides in order for it drag on unchecked. If one side is not fighting, the conflict will cease almost immediately. However it must be the dominant side that takes the first step. If it is Palestine that stops first, the last Israeli strike could cause considerable damage to what’s left of Gaza. Whereas if it is Israel that stops first, the last suicide bomb or missile will probably only knock a hole in a wall or two in Israel.

It is about time that the USA woke up to the extremist country they are supporting. Israel could not afford to survive without the huge cash donations it gets from the USA, but America is washing its hands of the actions Israel takes with American money to destroy Palestine. For how much longer must this go one?

The US says that the building must stop to enable a viable Palestinian state to emerge alongside Israel through negotiations. But what are the USA doing to add teeth to this political wet sop? Nothing. No restrictions on support to Israel, no sanctions, just talk. All hot air and nothing else.

Wake up USA, Israel only wants you for your money. They don’t care about anything else. The only way to get Israel’s attention is to stop the money. Forget the talk, the speeches of outrage, the media posturing – stop the cash!

Only when Israel runs out of American cash with which to raze Palestinian life will the region be able to make any progress towards creating a lasting peace for all peoples. Then they might be able to tear down the walls instead of building them higher.