Discuss: The Gospel of Consumption

How do we calculate the environmental “sins of omission” and the economic “sins of commission” that have been foisted upon the Earth and the family of humanity in the first eight years of Century XXI? How will our children and history view this brief period of time at the outset of the new millennium when arrogant and greedy, self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe willfully and recklessly chose to “pad their own pockets” and, by their fraudulent efforts, take life as we know it and the living Earth down a descending, primrose path into darkness and to some colossal wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has witnessed.

If the human community keeps doing precisely what we are doing now and not choose to make necessary changes, then a sense of foreboding overtakes me because the shameless Masters of the Universe will have ’successfully’ perpetrated a gigantic financial sham and left our children with a world - both ecologically and economically - in shambles.

These people need to be exposed
and dealt with as time moves
on.
Peace

The production and intake of goods in this country should have a drastic change, and this change should come in the way of production that is necessary for a good life but not production that is over the needs of any person. That just means cutting back on what we take in and not producing items that will not sell. I work at an electronics store in which every week we rifle though every DVD and send back hundreds of them to the production company because the DVD’s are not selling. Once we send back the DVD’s to the company what I presume is the companies more than likely just throw away the unsold discs. This wastefulness of unsold products is just deplorable, this is why, maybe companies should just go to a system where more items that are known to not sell very well are special ordered so that the, material for the disc, or whatever material the product is made of, is not just a wasted pice of plastic, or any material. Wasted products get sent back to the manufacture every day, who I’m sure don’t recycle there products. Even if production went only to main selling items there would be less waste in this country.

As consumers our mission is to buy as many things as possible. Up front, this situation isn’t bad. It means we get everything we ever wanted or needed, right? Wrong. Public Relations believe that we as a whole are unable to know what we want. What’s odd though is that they are right. As consumers it isn’t our role in life to attempt to understand why we NEED and WANT things. We have been told what to think and how to think for so long we no longer have control of our thoughts. In this article, it talks of topsoil. To me it is an analogy speaking of how once we run out of topsoil we no longer have any. There is no way to make some more. The same is applies to friendships with people of societies across the globe. Once we have completely demolished society there is no coming back. Sadly, the demolition of ethic values is happening right now and there is no cure.

It’s like the mindless masses of
people have so brainwashed and
programmed to keep this ship
afloat.
I think it’s crazy and we are seeing the end result of this madness.
There has to be a better way to
live for everybody on the planet.

I wish more people could read this
I have always felt we need more family time.  This is what are children need not more things.  The most important thing we can give is our time and love.  We do not have to believe in all the ads and buy things just because they tell us we need them and our neighbors have them. Carole

The preservation of Earth’s body and environs, and its maintenance as a fit place for human habitation, could be initiated so simply, sensibly and responsibly by following “Ten Commandments” for immediate economic reform.

http://www.ft.com...

Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Published: April 7 2009 20:02 | Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.

In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.

The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Dear Friends,

Wonderful discussion. The ideas generated here appear vital to me. While I agree with everyone who says no one can predict the future, I also believe we can likely agree that if the human community keep doing precisely what we are doing now, we will keep getting what we are getting now.

One indication of faulty reasoning and extreme foolishness, I suppose, would be for us to believe that we can keep overconsuming, overproducing and overpopulating as we are doing now and somehow achieve different results from the ones in existence now.

If, for example, by doing “more of the same business-as-usual activities” that we are doing now, we could be leading our children down a “primrose path” to a recognizably horrendous fate of some unknowable kind, would reason and common sense not suggest a change in behavior?

We have self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us who are recommending to the children that all of us can live large and long; that we can conspicuously consume limited resources, pollute the frangible environment, overpopulate the finite planet and ravage the Earth…...just the way they are insisting all of us do now. These arrogant and avaricious leaders are living examples of patently unsustainable lives and, yes, they take pride in their gigantic ecological ‘footprints’ and lifestyles based upon excessive consumption and unbridled hoarding. If our children were to keep doing what my not-so-great generation of elders are adamantly advocating and doing now, what is likely to become of them? 

My growing sense of frustration results from a realization that remarkably clear, intellectually honest and morally courageous reports from so many responsible and duty-bound scientists show us that the Masters of the Universe are determined to deny what could somehow be real and not to speak publicly about what they believe to be true regarding the predicament in which the family of humanity finds itself in these early years of Century XXI. Even worse, their minions with leadership responsibilities and duties in environmental organizations have collusively been enjoined from speaking about whatsoever they believe to be true. As a consequence, a conspiracy of silence has been established among all these leaders and the absurdly enriched talking heads in the mass media who eschew intellectual honesty and moral courage in favor of reporting repetitively about whatsoever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable and religiously tolerated.

The silence of so many leaders is deafening, while the duplicitous, disinformational chatter of the talking heads is morally outrageous. What is much worse, sad to say, is that the determination of these leaders and the talking heads to live large and long in such stupendously unsustainable ways—come what may for the children—is not only grossly irresponsible, it is a profound dereliction of their duty to warn, I believe.

Perhaps change is in the offing.

Sincerely yours,

Steve