Supposing it was discovered that (say) eating a handful of grass every day would ward off cancer. In an RBE there would be much rejoicing at the discovery and studies would look into how we can produce and distribute enough grass to meet this new need, and/or how we could extract or manufacure the active ingredient if that would make the remedy more efficient. The objective would be to derive the most human benefit from the least unit of resource.
In our current economy, the jobs of people who work in big pharma and the cancer industry would be at stake. It would be in the vested interest to discredit the claim that grass cures cancer, or to corner the market in grass, or to monetise it or the active ingredient that brings the benefit. It is easy to deride this need to protect vested interests, but it is a very real need. If people don't have jobs their lives collapse. Therefore there's a trade off of jobs for other gains. The "need" to have a job has to be weighed against other needs.
In an RBE, there is no need to do work for its own sake and if work can be handed over to machines or obviates, that is done as soon as possible. Thus if grass cures cancer and there is no more need for people to work in big pharma or the cancer industy that is good. Those people can do something else.
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Planned obsolesence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9MyB0hbI4
This version of the film has subtitles in ?Danish, and quite a lot of dialogue in French and German, but even if you can't get much from the non English content, it still gives a fascinating insight into the scourge of planned obsolescence.
There are several examples of PO in the film, and some encouraging examples of people defeating it. On strand shows someone hacking his printer, which has and EEPROM chip in it that makes if fail after a preset amount of time. As to the cartel that forced lightbulb manufacturers to limit the life of bulbs to 1000 hours, we should be shocked. The everlasting lightbulb is not a myth! There's one in the US that's burned for >100 years.
What's most harrowing is seeing the computer scrap in Ghana, and the poor people scavenging for recyclable materials. There is a campaigner featyred there who tracks down the end users of the computers and pints out to them where they end up.
Another stand-out for me was the objection of workers to the making of long lasting goods, as this would do them out of their jobs. True, it would, but using up the planets finite resources to create jobs is completely insane. Use the resources consevatively, do only the work that the sustainable systen puls in - don't create work. And finally, share out the food, water, shelter, etc to everyone, so they don't have to work to survive.
This version of the film has subtitles in ?Danish, and quite a lot of dialogue in French and German, but even if you can't get much from the non English content, it still gives a fascinating insight into the scourge of planned obsolescence.
There are several examples of PO in the film, and some encouraging examples of people defeating it. On strand shows someone hacking his printer, which has and EEPROM chip in it that makes if fail after a preset amount of time. As to the cartel that forced lightbulb manufacturers to limit the life of bulbs to 1000 hours, we should be shocked. The everlasting lightbulb is not a myth! There's one in the US that's burned for >100 years.
What's most harrowing is seeing the computer scrap in Ghana, and the poor people scavenging for recyclable materials. There is a campaigner featyred there who tracks down the end users of the computers and pints out to them where they end up.
Another stand-out for me was the objection of workers to the making of long lasting goods, as this would do them out of their jobs. True, it would, but using up the planets finite resources to create jobs is completely insane. Use the resources consevatively, do only the work that the sustainable systen puls in - don't create work. And finally, share out the food, water, shelter, etc to everyone, so they don't have to work to survive.
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Systems thinking and air travel
Alastair Clayton, in a letter to The Times (London) reprinted in The Week magazine, makes a rather insightful observation that instead of building a third runway at Heathrow (a cypher for airport expansion generally) government should spend money making the process of clearing customs faster. (He is a non-EU passport holder).
In the abstract, this is an example of systems thinking. The system in transport should be seen as end-to-end. What time do I need to leave point A to get to point B by time T, and how do I do so most quickly? Mr Clayton says that clearing customs after a flight from Geneva to London can take longer than the flight itself. Optimising the rumway to runway component of air travel is optimising a subsystem. Optimising a subsystem can suboptimise a system.
Of course transport is itself a subsystem. Systems thinking inevitably leads to deciding what is the overall system of systems. For all practical purposes, the top-level system is human beings living sustainably on this planet and the test of any change or development is whether it meets human need better and more sustainably - a Resource Based Economy. So whether Mr Clayton's journeys are shotened by more rapid customs or more runways, we ned to look at what human need is being met by his journey, and how that human need may most sustainably be met.
With transport, the first place to look is electronic communications. How many airports, railway lines, motorways and vehicles could be saved by putting high speed video conferencing in every home and office.
In the abstract, this is an example of systems thinking. The system in transport should be seen as end-to-end. What time do I need to leave point A to get to point B by time T, and how do I do so most quickly? Mr Clayton says that clearing customs after a flight from Geneva to London can take longer than the flight itself. Optimising the rumway to runway component of air travel is optimising a subsystem. Optimising a subsystem can suboptimise a system.
Of course transport is itself a subsystem. Systems thinking inevitably leads to deciding what is the overall system of systems. For all practical purposes, the top-level system is human beings living sustainably on this planet and the test of any change or development is whether it meets human need better and more sustainably - a Resource Based Economy. So whether Mr Clayton's journeys are shotened by more rapid customs or more runways, we ned to look at what human need is being met by his journey, and how that human need may most sustainably be met.
With transport, the first place to look is electronic communications. How many airports, railway lines, motorways and vehicles could be saved by putting high speed video conferencing in every home and office.
Marketing and rioting
These are some recommendations from the newly published report on the 2011 riots in England, with my comments.
"Better information should be provided to parents and schools about marketing techniques and the way they seek to influence behaviour. The Panel recommends that the Advertising Standards Authority make the impact of advertising and branding techniques on young people a feature of its new school education programme to raise resilience amongst children."
So the ASA should go into schools to educate young people how not to be [unduly] influenced by marketing trechniques.
"Communities are concerned about the aggressive marketing by brands to young people, who often cannot afford their products. The Panel recommends that the Advertising Standards Authority incorporate commercialism and materialism into their engagement work with young people and take action on the findings."
Right - so marketing to people who can't afford to buy a product is going to entice them into stealing it instead, so the ASA needs to step in and tell them about commercialsm and materialism, which are the very lifeblood of advertising/marketing.
"Children must be protected from excessive marketing, whilst supporting business and not harming commerce. We also recommend that the Government appoint an independent champion to manage a dialogue between Government and big Brands to further this debate"
What, they should market things just to make children buy them if they can afford them, but not enough to make them steal them? Rather than there not being excessive marketing, we should protect children from it?
Are the report writers blinkered as to what marketing/advertising is? It is a deliberate attempt to get people to buy things by getting them to want them and/or believe they need them. There's an almighty paradox if we accept advertising/marketing, but also educate children in how not to succumb to it. It's analagous to teaching them how to get hit less painfully instead of stopping the hitting. Marketing and advertising are not natural forces like the weather. They're something we deliberately do
In the current system, if the effects of marketing are mitigated, the amount of the product consumed will fall and this will lead to less work making it and so less ability by workers to consume products. It's called cyclic consumption and it's a massive problem. We have to keep consuming to keep economic growth going, but we can't keep consuming stuff as we haven't got an infinite amount of it. The answer is to abandon the riduculous concept of economic growth as we know it and start working on meeting human needs sustainably.
What is wrong with the idea of making the meeting of human needs, especially basic ones, our priority as a planet of humans? Obviously we have to do so using only the finite resources available to us. Therefor it seems logical to conserve those resources so that we can support the maximumm population that is scientifically possible. That's a Resouce Based Economy in a nutshell.
There's a basic human need for protection from the elements/environment, and clothes and shoes are likely to be a way to provide this need, I touched before (http://colins-rbe.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/irreducible-human-need.html) on Amartya Sen's Capability Approach. When advertisers make people crave the latest pair of trainers, they are not trying to appeal to their need to protect their feet and skeleton from the effects of walking and running, but to higher order needs for feelings of self-worth, acceptance, etc, and suggesting that buying a product or products will help meet that need. But it won't.
"Better information should be provided to parents and schools about marketing techniques and the way they seek to influence behaviour. The Panel recommends that the Advertising Standards Authority make the impact of advertising and branding techniques on young people a feature of its new school education programme to raise resilience amongst children."
So the ASA should go into schools to educate young people how not to be [unduly] influenced by marketing trechniques.
"Communities are concerned about the aggressive marketing by brands to young people, who often cannot afford their products. The Panel recommends that the Advertising Standards Authority incorporate commercialism and materialism into their engagement work with young people and take action on the findings."
Right - so marketing to people who can't afford to buy a product is going to entice them into stealing it instead, so the ASA needs to step in and tell them about commercialsm and materialism, which are the very lifeblood of advertising/marketing.
"Children must be protected from excessive marketing, whilst supporting business and not harming commerce. We also recommend that the Government appoint an independent champion to manage a dialogue between Government and big Brands to further this debate"
What, they should market things just to make children buy them if they can afford them, but not enough to make them steal them? Rather than there not being excessive marketing, we should protect children from it?
Are the report writers blinkered as to what marketing/advertising is? It is a deliberate attempt to get people to buy things by getting them to want them and/or believe they need them. There's an almighty paradox if we accept advertising/marketing, but also educate children in how not to succumb to it. It's analagous to teaching them how to get hit less painfully instead of stopping the hitting. Marketing and advertising are not natural forces like the weather. They're something we deliberately do
In the current system, if the effects of marketing are mitigated, the amount of the product consumed will fall and this will lead to less work making it and so less ability by workers to consume products. It's called cyclic consumption and it's a massive problem. We have to keep consuming to keep economic growth going, but we can't keep consuming stuff as we haven't got an infinite amount of it. The answer is to abandon the riduculous concept of economic growth as we know it and start working on meeting human needs sustainably.
What is wrong with the idea of making the meeting of human needs, especially basic ones, our priority as a planet of humans? Obviously we have to do so using only the finite resources available to us. Therefor it seems logical to conserve those resources so that we can support the maximumm population that is scientifically possible. That's a Resouce Based Economy in a nutshell.
There's a basic human need for protection from the elements/environment, and clothes and shoes are likely to be a way to provide this need, I touched before (http://colins-rbe.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/irreducible-human-need.html) on Amartya Sen's Capability Approach. When advertisers make people crave the latest pair of trainers, they are not trying to appeal to their need to protect their feet and skeleton from the effects of walking and running, but to higher order needs for feelings of self-worth, acceptance, etc, and suggesting that buying a product or products will help meet that need. But it won't.
Money does not make the world go round
I read a letter from Nicko Williams, founder and Chief Executive of Climate Cars (a taxi service using only Hybrid cars) to The Economist, reprinted in The Week magazine (31/3/2012). I think it is nonsense, reflecting a view that can see past money as the beginning and end of everything.
He writes "my question is whether it is reasonable to expect living standards to keep improving" and his answer appears to be 'no', because he adds "For our generation [he is 28] to work harder and longer than the last seems to me to be an inevitability". This is because, he says, "History tells us that we live in cycles" and "We live in a far more competitive world than our parents, therefore our generation will have to fight harder, with the prospect of lower comparable rewards than our parents."
What brings us an improved standard of living, Nicko, is science and technology. Are you seriously suggesting that there hasn't been phenomenal progress in this? In fact progress in science and technology has been exponential.
Much of this technology has brilliant potential for labour saving, so why are we, or must we, work longer and harder? We were told that technology would liberate us from work, but this seems to quietly have been dropped. The problem is that by saving labour, technology reduces employment, and in our system employment is the main way to get money and money is pretty much the only way to get access to the resources we need to live and thrive. Break this link between work and survival, and you allow techonology free rein to improve our lives.
"History tells us that we live in cycles". No, history tells us that we have lived in cycles. The cycles referred to are, I assume, the so-called economic cycles, which are in fact just monetary cycles. These are entirely man -made and unrelated to the real resources available to us. There is no cycle in technological and scientific development and there is no inevitability that the monetary cycle will repeat.
"We live in a far more competitive world than our parents, therefore our generation will have to fight harder". Fighting harder is virtually the same as competing more, therefore, generalised, this statement becomes X therefore X. Logical flaws aside, do we live in a more competitive world than our parents, and - more imnportantly, is this inevitable?
I don't know how overall competitiveness might be measured or aggregated, but I do know that co-operation rather than competition, is encroaching on the old scarcity mentality of fighting for resources. http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/ would be a good place to start some research ino this, but as boss of a taxi firm, Nicko is already working to an access or service model, rather than an ownership model in the field of personalised transport.
Nicko's 'monetary blind spot' is most clearly identified in his reference to the "unprecedented property boom" his parents' generation experienced. 'Property boom' is slang/jargon for house prices going up. Apart from the fact that house prices rising faster than incomes makes it harder for people to afford to buy one ('get on the housing ladder' in the jargon) - a downside that is usually ignored - it is obvious that the true value of a house is independent of how much it can be sold for, and given that left unmaintained a house will eventually fall down, its value (as distinct from its price) tends to fall over time.
Money may indicate true value, albeit rather crudely, but it is not true value itself. If we do not take our eyes off money, and look at human need and the planet as a finite resource, we are doomed as a species.
He writes "my question is whether it is reasonable to expect living standards to keep improving" and his answer appears to be 'no', because he adds "For our generation [he is 28] to work harder and longer than the last seems to me to be an inevitability". This is because, he says, "History tells us that we live in cycles" and "We live in a far more competitive world than our parents, therefore our generation will have to fight harder, with the prospect of lower comparable rewards than our parents."
What brings us an improved standard of living, Nicko, is science and technology. Are you seriously suggesting that there hasn't been phenomenal progress in this? In fact progress in science and technology has been exponential.
Much of this technology has brilliant potential for labour saving, so why are we, or must we, work longer and harder? We were told that technology would liberate us from work, but this seems to quietly have been dropped. The problem is that by saving labour, technology reduces employment, and in our system employment is the main way to get money and money is pretty much the only way to get access to the resources we need to live and thrive. Break this link between work and survival, and you allow techonology free rein to improve our lives.
"History tells us that we live in cycles". No, history tells us that we have lived in cycles. The cycles referred to are, I assume, the so-called economic cycles, which are in fact just monetary cycles. These are entirely man -made and unrelated to the real resources available to us. There is no cycle in technological and scientific development and there is no inevitability that the monetary cycle will repeat.
"We live in a far more competitive world than our parents, therefore our generation will have to fight harder". Fighting harder is virtually the same as competing more, therefore, generalised, this statement becomes X therefore X. Logical flaws aside, do we live in a more competitive world than our parents, and - more imnportantly, is this inevitable?
I don't know how overall competitiveness might be measured or aggregated, but I do know that co-operation rather than competition, is encroaching on the old scarcity mentality of fighting for resources. http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/ would be a good place to start some research ino this, but as boss of a taxi firm, Nicko is already working to an access or service model, rather than an ownership model in the field of personalised transport.
Nicko's 'monetary blind spot' is most clearly identified in his reference to the "unprecedented property boom" his parents' generation experienced. 'Property boom' is slang/jargon for house prices going up. Apart from the fact that house prices rising faster than incomes makes it harder for people to afford to buy one ('get on the housing ladder' in the jargon) - a downside that is usually ignored - it is obvious that the true value of a house is independent of how much it can be sold for, and given that left unmaintained a house will eventually fall down, its value (as distinct from its price) tends to fall over time.
Money may indicate true value, albeit rather crudely, but it is not true value itself. If we do not take our eyes off money, and look at human need and the planet as a finite resource, we are doomed as a species.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Low tech and inefficient shopping
I went clothes shopping today, for trousers. It was an inefficient, low tech experience. I went to a well known clothes store, fingered through racks of trousers - the ones I hated least - looking for a pair or two that might fit me, tried them on, and found a second pair of the same size and type that fitted.
I can remember in the 1980s seeing on television (Tomorrow's World?) a whole body scan of someone (simulated, I think) to get their external dimensions with a view to computer cutting a suit for them. Yes, my body's external dimensions should be an easy thing to measure and record, as often as I like. With this information, finding out which shops have trousers that will fit me in stock ought to be very simple. I may wish to go somewhere and physically see/hold a pair of trousers to see if I am content with their colour, style, texture, and so on, but why waste my time if they don't have any that fit me?
If I have seen a style/colour that I like, given my known dimensions and preference for fit (length/looseness) it should be no problem to computer cut a pair of trousers just for me, and deliver them home or somewhere for collection. This should vastlly reduce the amount of already made trousers to flick through - though actually the flicking through could be saved by automation.
Perhaps the combination of size and fit merits a try on, but the size of trousers should be measured consistently (ie in a standard way) to avoid irritating variations in actual size compared to nominal size even in a particular shop. I should be able to try on any pair of trousers for size and fit information.
In an RBE the technology would be applied to radically reduce the time and materials waste involved in what should be the simple task of obtaining an ordinary garment.
I can remember in the 1980s seeing on television (Tomorrow's World?) a whole body scan of someone (simulated, I think) to get their external dimensions with a view to computer cutting a suit for them. Yes, my body's external dimensions should be an easy thing to measure and record, as often as I like. With this information, finding out which shops have trousers that will fit me in stock ought to be very simple. I may wish to go somewhere and physically see/hold a pair of trousers to see if I am content with their colour, style, texture, and so on, but why waste my time if they don't have any that fit me?
If I have seen a style/colour that I like, given my known dimensions and preference for fit (length/looseness) it should be no problem to computer cut a pair of trousers just for me, and deliver them home or somewhere for collection. This should vastlly reduce the amount of already made trousers to flick through - though actually the flicking through could be saved by automation.
Perhaps the combination of size and fit merits a try on, but the size of trousers should be measured consistently (ie in a standard way) to avoid irritating variations in actual size compared to nominal size even in a particular shop. I should be able to try on any pair of trousers for size and fit information.
In an RBE the technology would be applied to radically reduce the time and materials waste involved in what should be the simple task of obtaining an ordinary garment.
Mastermind spoof on debt in EU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOzR3UAyXao&feature=related
Spoof mastermind sketch redolent of Bird and Fortune exposing absurdity of the fact that "broke economies" owe each other money.
Spoof mastermind sketch redolent of Bird and Fortune exposing absurdity of the fact that "broke economies" owe each other money.
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