Do we really want soul-sucking essence-demeaning career choices?

The Dilbert comic strip does such an excellent job of capturing the essential despair of working in modern corporations.

The modern corporation is built in a top-down hierarchy, boss-men at the top (usually the boss-men are actually men) working through layers of captains and lieutenants, whose job titles are "Director" or "Manager", to dictate what the company does.  This leaves the people at the bottom of the structure having no opportunity for their own essence to live and breath.

There are Wally's all over the country, living a zombie-like existence, shuffling from meeting to meeting, doing tasks that probably have zero association with their divine spark of self expression.

Over time the self-survival tendency in some will do as Wally has done, adopt the practice of Despair, of knowing that they will never express true self through their work, and resigned to the slow crushing death of stifling their essence.

Is this the sort of society we want to live in?

Is this the best/highest form of gathering a group of people to operate a business making useful products?  That is - a Corporation is a grouping of people, most often for the purpose of running a business.  Corporations were developed out of era's where near-dictatorial top-down rule was the normal way.   But is this the best most healthy way for groupings of people to collaborate on running a business?

What do you think?

A look at Greenroad Media

"Greenroad Media is the only media company that brings together businesses and governments to beautify our highways and public spaces through innovative corporate sponsorships. The result is a truly unique public-private partnership." That's what they have to say about themselves. Their corporate activity is to lease roadside space and plant flowers. That's very nice of them to prettify the roadsides. However the floral displays have corporate messaging in them.

This is done with the approval of state Department of Transportation (DOT) agencies. And clearly it is similar in purpose to existing roadside signs that are infesting the landscape. A difference is that existing roadside signs are on private property, paying money to the landowners fortunate enough to be roadside, while Greenroad Media pays money to the state. What's common is that both act to further encroach corporate messaging into the world around us.

They call it the Living Pixel System ™ and is a way of planting images using flowers of specific coloration. They situate the floral displays on natural slopes along the road, and accompany them with a small roadside sign. The roadside sign is called a "recognition sign" and lists the corporate sponsorship.

It sounds all well and good.. surely planting flowers is a good thing, eh? Well, yes, but...

There's always that 'but' intruding in my mind on what might otherwise be a good idea. I like the idea of planting flowers along the road, to be sure. But. Uh, the objection is the intrusion of corporatism.

Corporatism is in this case propagating itself with advertising. That the advertising is clothed in "green" (flowers) only hides the fact that it's advertising. Am I pleased to hear that more plants are being planted? Yes! Still the purpose is to spread corporatism.

Another objection is that it is placing the states in the position of being fed by the corporation. A larger issue in this is whether the state (governments) should be subservient to corporations or the other way around. My concern in our modern times is that the corporations are more powerful than governments, that corporations are dictating terms to governments, and this puts governments into the position of being unable to represent the will of the people and instead governments are having to kowtow to the will of corporations.

Still, flowers, hmmm...

Links: 

http://www.greenroadmedia.com/

Review: Flow: For Love of Water (2007)

An astonishingly wide-ranging film. An informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests. The story is about water supply, and it covers the global scale of this problem. A little-covered problem all around the world is the delivery of fresh clean water to everybody, the overtaxing of existing water systems, etc. Water is a core human need e.g. we die within two days if we do not have water, and there are many diseases that can be carried in water.

The movie builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question 'CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?'

One of the transformations covered in this movie is the privatization and commercialism of the water system. All around the world local water systems are being bought up by transnational corporations like Vivendi and Nestle, who then find ways to do corporate profiteering on the back of the core human need for water. For example they're demanding the poorest of the poor pay a few cents for each jug of water, money they can't afford to spend. And in many cases as they cannot afford the commercial water they go down to the local river to get water, but the local river is polluted, full of sewage or industrial waste, they get sick and die.

Around the world there are protests against this system and the protesters are portrayed as believing themselves to be in a life or death struggle. For example a village in India is shown where a Coca-Cola plant was in operation across the street, they described their water as "tasting bad" ever since the plant opened, and they conducted a daily protest for two years against the plant. Eventually the plant was forced to be shut down.

Those are the kinds of things the movie shows. On the flip side from those problems a value is repeated over and over - our cultural tradition is that water, like air, cannot be owned.

For example a case in Michigan has Nestle operating a bottling plant where they are pumping ground water from dozens of wells in the area. Over 400,000 gallons per day of water pumped and bottled for sale. As a land owner they have a right, so the movie says, to use the water from their land. But clearly the "right of use" doctrine wasn't conceived to be conducted at such a large scale. The protesters in that case explain "right of use" as not conveying ownership.

The movie has a huge flaw in the form of an unstated corollary problem. Population growth.

Population growth is a large factor in driving the increase in water use. In 1900 the world human population was around 1 billion people, today it's around 6-7 billion people and rapidly growing.

Obviously whatever water purification and delivery system existed in 1900 has to have become overtaxed by the population growth. Of course more water systems have been built in the intervening years. My point is that to accommodate population growth the water purification and delivery systems have to increase in scale to match.

Most of the movie is living with rural farming communities. People who have mechanical pumps and are accustomed to carrying a jug to a river or well to fetch water. With 6.5x the number of people plus all the industrial increases since 1900 obviously the amount of toxics in the water will have increased since 1900. A local community who could adequately get water from their local well in 1900 needs something else today to accommodate increased population and increased need to purify the toxic stuff out of the water.

The movie says nothing about these problems. This makes the movie very interesting, and full of stunning visuals, but very deeply flawed.

The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear

Wow, now I understand the significance of something I've seen mentioned in the press. The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to stop publishing the M3 number. I've seen this in the news, but it didn't register for me the significance, but according to The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear this technical detail in the economic statistics reporting couldn't be more important.

M3 is a measure of American currency in circulation. It is the total of physical currency in actual circulation (M0), the amount held in bank accounts (M1), the amount held in other kinds of accounts (M2) and the amount held outside the U.S. (M3).

What's important here is that oil is traded in only two exchanges: New York and London. For all oil bought and sold worldwide, the transaction occurs either in the New York or London market. Plus, the transaction occurs in U.S. Dollars, and the M3 statistic is largely a measure of the currency used in those oil transactions.

Enter Iran and a plan they announced. They wish to establish another oil exchange, and on that oil exchange the transactions will be denominated in Euros.

And, enter Iraq with a plan they launched shortly before they were invaded. Namely, they began, in 2000, to sell their oil with transactions denominated in Euros.

Look at what happened to Iraq, and what the U.S. government is threatening to do to Iran.

The conclusion that's being implied is that the Iraq war was launched so the U.S. would retain control over the world oil market, and that an Iran war is threatened for the same reason. Hmmm...??

The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear

Wow, now I understand the significance of something I've seen mentioned in the press. The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to stop publishing the M3 number. I've seen this in the news, but it didn't register for me the significance, but according to The Story about Oil you NEED to Hear this technical detail in the economic statistics reporting couldn't be more important.

M3 is a measure of American currency in circulation. It is the total of physical currency in actual circulation (M0), the amount held in bank accounts (M1), the amount held in other kinds of accounts (M2) and the amount held outside the U.S. (M3).

What's important here is that oil is traded in only two exchanges: New York and London. For all oil bought and sold worldwide, the transaction occurs either in the New York or London market. Plus, the transaction occurs in U.S. Dollars, and the M3 statistic is largely a measure of the currency used in those oil transactions.

Enter Iran and a plan they announced. They wish to establish another oil exchange, and on that oil exchange the transactions will be denominated in Euros.

And, enter Iraq with a plan they launched shortly before they were invaded. Namely, they began, in 2000, to sell their oil with transactions denominated in Euros.

Look at what happened to Iraq, and what the U.S. government is threatening to do to Iran.

The conclusion that's being implied is that the Iraq war was launched so the U.S. would retain control over the world oil market, and that an Iran war is threatened for the same reason. Hmmm...??

Failing car companies means the car companies failed

What's good for General Motors is good for America, eh? At least that's what they used to say. But is it? This is an especially poingant question right now as the car companies are seeing slowdowns in their sales.

Another Crummy Month for American Cars (By Seth Jayson (TMF Bent), fool.com, December 2, 2005)

He points out the 3 major car companies are all seeing drastically declining sales. And at the same time Toyota was seeing a jump in sales.

According to Seth the pundit class is clamoring for the government to do something about this. In other words some sort of handout from the government to prop up the car companies.

In my view that's the last thing the car companies need. If the car companies are seeing a decline in sales, well I can point to something Seth did not. Namely, the price of oil coupled with the dependance by the car companies on SUV sales.

The price of gasoline went over $3/gallon over most of the U.S. for a period, however it's since fallen again to where it was before the jump (in California it's around $2.40/gallon). This sent shockwaves around the country, people looking to dump their SUV's, and looking to get transportation that doesn't use so much gasoline. This of course would cause a shift away from SUV's.

Seth talks about a price war fooling the public into thinking the price of cars would always be dropping. I don't know about that. What I do know is the people I interact with got alarmed over the price of gasoline.

I wish to repeat something ... long term, the price of gasoline is only going up.

The recent price hike had to do with scares over the war in Iraq and damage done by the hurricanes this summer. However at the same time the oil production system is running at full capacity, AND at the same time demand is only going up. Oil demand doesn't come just from the U.S. but both China and India are seeing a surge of their middle class, and a shift from owning two-wheelers (bicycles and motorcycles) to owning cars. As China and India do this their demand levels will go up.

Further there is the Peak Oil scenario to consider. The idea is that at some point discoveries of oil reserves will not be able to keep up with the demand. At that point there will be a peak in oil production capacity, and assuming demand continues to rise oil availability will only fall. Market forces will make sure the price goes up, and up, and up.

Now, let's get back to the major car companies. They've been riding high on a binge of SUV's for years. In a way they were just responding to customer demand, but at the same time those car companies could have done as Toyota did and looked into the future to see the oil picture. The public obviously doesn't understand the oil picture, or they wouldn't be buying gas guzzling SUV's. But the car companies have a lot of smart people in them, obviously the car companies are capable of seeing the real oil picture.

The real oil picture is that the long term trend for the price of oil is upward. And that any time the price of oil gets "high" the public panics and switches to small cars.

The car companies don't deserve any handouts ... they don't deserve sympathy ... nor pity ... they need to take their lumps and change their business. Toyota and Honda have both been pursuing the high efficiency concept for years, and they're doing wonderfully.

Walmart, the high cost of low prices

Robert Greenwalds latest movie is about Walmart. I've written a bit about him and his work here, here, here and here.

I have yet to see the movie, but the trailers on the web site and this review by buzzflash.com really has me anxious to see it.

The premiere week is November 13-19 nationwide, and unfortunately I'll be out of the country that week. You can find a screening through the web site, as he's following a very non-traditional distribution system. Rather than distribute through the mainstream movie houses and DVD sales channels, and rather than be subject to the implicit censorship that happens in those channels, he is doing this as direct-to-the-people as possible. Partly this is because a goal of the movie is to build a movement, just like his earlier movies had a goal to build an anti-Bush movement.

Apparently in this movie he documents the image of Walmart destroying small town economics and underpaying their employees. The story has been around for awhile, and occasionally on the news there will be reports of locals fighting against Walmart building a store in their town.

For example (from the buzzflash interview):

BuzzFlash: A couple of things we've read about Wal-Mart astonished us – one in a book that came out this summer, and there's another book coming shortly, on Wal-Mart. But one of the two of the things was that in some states – I know in Arizona - I've read that Wal-Mart is the number-one corporation for having employees on Medicaid.

Robert Greenwald: Yes, there's this whole section of the film where we go into this fact. Wal-Mart - by design, by pattern, by system – and we have managers on camera talking about this – they pay their employees so little – and this is a corporation that made $10 billion last year – they pay their employees so little, that the employees are encouraged and guided to get public assistance, Section 8 housing, food stamps, and various healthcare plans provided by the states. It's scandalous that everyone's tax dollars should be going so that Wal-Mart does not have to pay its employees decent wages or benefits.

There's much more along those lines. To think that people who have a full time job (oh, wait, Walmart forces their employees to work only 35 hours a week max so that they aren't full time) are being paid wages under the federal poverty line... and to think that Walmart is effectively subsidized by the government in this circuitous fashion ... this is outrageous.

At the same time this is not a new effect.

In 1951 or so my Grandparents bought a Hardware store franchise in Harrisonville MO. They ran that store for nearly 25 years. The last few of those years saw competition from large retailers on the edge of town. This wasn't Walmart, as Walmart hadn't really begun yet in 1970, but some other large chain. They were towards retirement age anyway, but that large chain really damaged the business leading to its death. They'd spent 20-25 years building that business, and by all rights should have been able to sell it as a going concern, but instead had to liquidate.

While Walmart may be the most successful of this kind of business, the culprit is really a general wave in retail sales operation. The example in the hardware store business is Home Depot and Lowes, between the two of them the mom-n-pop hardware stores like my Grandfathers store has basically disappeared.

The movie isn't yet available but this book: The United States of Wal-Mart looks to be right up the same alley.