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.

What did you do for Buy Nothing Day?

Buy Nothing Day is a project sponsored by Ad Busters to counter the egregious consumption spiral that happens on the day after "turkey day". That is, on the day after Thanksgiving (the fourth thursday of November) is the official opening of the Christmas Shopping Season. On that day occurs a ridiculous display of consumerism, with people going to the stores early, waiting in line for the opening bell, and buying, buying, buying. Because, they have CHRISTMAS to shop for.

Let me ask you - where in the message of Jesus, whose birthday Christ Mass is meant to observe, was a recommendation to shop until you drop?

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is (By David Cohn, Wired News, 02:00 AM Nov. 23, 2005 PT) - an interview with the founder of Buy Nothing Day.

It's hard to imagine this effort having much effect .. first, almost nobody knows about it .. second, for the most part it just displaces spending from one day to another. In our modern society it's real hard to do anything without spending money. What's the usual way to hang out? Head to the coffee shop? Head to the mall? Are there many public areas that do not involve spending money? And then there's television talking to your subconscious at you every minute about how you need this or that or something else to feel satisfied with yourself.

Still it's a noble cause, and I do my best to observe that day. However I rarely manage to go through the day without spending money.

For example, in past years for Thanksgiving I would take the Amtrak train to my Aunt's house, and then return home on the day after Thanksgiving. Whoops, that right there makes me spend some money to buy the train ticket, and on Buy Nothing Day. And then there's food while on the train .. it's a 3 hr ride, and there's a diner car offering adequately tasty bites.

This year was a little different. We didn't go to my Aunts, instead we spent the weekend at the Mount Madonna Retreat Center. We arrived on Thanksgiving day, and there was nobody in the office that day to finalize our reservation. Since they're real friendly people they handle that by letting us stay there anyway, and they handle the financial arrangements the next day when someone is in the office. So, sigh, that meant on Buy Nothing Day I was paying for our stay.

Then we stopped by the onsite bookstore and on the way into the store I mentioned to my sweetie that it's Buy Nothing Day. That led to talking with the store owner about BND. Now, this being a vegan commune in the Santa Cruz mountains the store owner is on the right wavelength to grok BND. He even exclaimed about the ridiculous show of consumerism on that day what with the stores opening at 5 AM to handle the crush of people. He said there ought to be something for that day to raise peoples awareness, so I pointed out that's exactly what BND is.

And then he admonished us to come back the next day to buy anything we set our sights on.

Hmmm... I'm not sure that's the point. If one just displaces their purchases from one day to another then have they made any difference?

In the interview linked above the originator talks about the spiritual journey involved with buy nothing day. In other words, what can you learn about yourself and your needs through buying nothing for a day?

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.

Composting the Easy Way

Composting the Easy Way (Michael J. McGroarty, http://gardening-articles.com)

Having an ample supply of good rich compost is the gardeners dream. It has many uses, and all of those uses will result in nicer plants. However, composting can be time consuming and hard work. I place a reasonable value on my time, so spending hours and hours turning compost piles doesn't qualify as a worthwhile exercise, at least in my book. Nonetheless, I do compost, but I do so on my terms.

I built two composting bins. Each bin is five feet wide, five feet deep, and four feet high. I built the bins by sinking 4" by 4" posts in the ground for the corners, and then nailed 2 by 4's and 1 by 4's, alternating on the sides.

I left 2" gaps between the boards for air circulation. The 2 by 4's are rigid enough to keep the sides from bowing out, and in between each 2 by 4 I used 1 by 4's to save a little money. The bins are only 3 sided, I left the front of the bins open so they can be filled and emptied easily. Photos of my compost bins are on this page: http://www.freeplants.com/composting.htm

I started by filling just one of the bins. I put grass clippings, dried leaves, and shrub clippings in the bins. I try not to put more than 6" of each material on a layer. You don't want 24" of grass clippings in the bin and you should alternate layers of green and brown material. If necessary, keep a few bags of dry leaves around so you can alternate layers of brown waste and green waste.

When we root cuttings we use coarse sand in the flats, so when it's time to pull the rooted cuttings out of the flats, the old sand goes on the compost pile. In our little backyard nursery we also have some plants in containers that do not survive. Rather than pulling the dead plant and the weeds out of the container, and then dumping the potting soil back on the soil pile, we just dump the whole container in the compost bin. This adds more brown material to the mix, and is a lot easier than separating the soil and the weeds.

Once the bin is full, the rules of composting say that you should turn the material in the bin every few weeks. There is no way that I have time to do that, so this is what I do. I pack as much material in the bin as I can before I start filling the second bin. I pile the material as high as I possibly can, and even let it spill out in front of the bin. Then I cover all the fresh material with mulch or potting soil, whatever brown material I can find.

Then when I'm out working in the garden I set a small sprinkler on top of the pile and turn it on very low, so a small spray of water runs on the material. Since I have a good water well, this doesn't cost me anything, so I let it run for at least two hours as often as I can. This keeps the material damp, and the moisture will cause the pile to heat up, which is what makes the composting action take place.

Once I have the first bin completely full, I start using the second bin. As the material in the first bin starts to break down, it will settle and the bin is no longer heaped up, so I just keep shoveling the material that I piled in front of the bin, up on top of the pile, until all the material is either in the bin, or piled on top of the heap. Then I just leave it alone, except to water it once in a while. The watering isn't necessary, it just speeds the process.

Because I don't turn the pile, I can't expect all of the material to rot completely. The material in the center is going to break down more than the material on the edges, but most of it does break down quite well. The next step
works great for me because I've got a small nursery, so I keep a pile of potting soil on hand at all times. But you can really do the same thing by just buying two or three yards of shredded mulch to get started, and piling it up near your compost bins. If you do this, you will always have a supply of good compost to work with.

Shredded bark, left in a pile will eventually break down and become great compost. The potting soil that I use is about 80% rotted bark. I make potting soil by purchasing fine textured and dark hardwood bark mulch, and I just put it in a pile and let it rot. The secret is to keep the pile low and flat, so that it does not shed the rain water away. You want the mulch to stay as wet as possible, this will cause it to break down fairly quickly.

So I keep a pile of rotted bark mulch near my compost bins. When both bins are completely full, I empty the bin containing the oldest material by piling it on top of my rotted bark mulch. I make sure the pile of rotted mulch is wide and flat on top so that when I put the material from the compost bin on top of the pile, the compost material is only 5 to 10 inches thick.

My mulch pile might be 12' wide, but it may only be 24 to 30 inches high. Once I have all the compost on top of the pile, then I go around the edge of the pile with a shovel, and take some of the material from the edges of the pile and toss it up on top of the pile, covering the compost with at least 6" of rotted bark. This will cause the compost material to decompose the rest of the way.

Once you get this system started, you never want to use all of the material in the pile. Always keep at least 2 to 3 cubic yards on hand so you've got something to mix with your compost. If you use a lot of compost material like I do, then you should buy more material and add to your pile in the late summer or fall, once you are done using it for the season.

Around here many of the supply companies sell a compost material that is already broken down quite well. This is what I buy to add to my stockpile. But I try to make sure that I have at least 3 yards of old material on hand, then I'll add another 3 yards of fresh material to that. Then in the spring I'll empty one of the compost bins and add the compost to the top of the pile.

The pile of usable compost will be layers of material, some more composted than others. Kind of like a sandwich. So what I do is chip off a section of the pile from the edge, spread it out on the ground so it's only about 8" deep, then run over it with my small rototiller. This mixes it together perfectly, and I shovel it onto the potting bench.

Having a pile of rotted compost near your compost bins is great because if you have a lot of leaves or grass clippings, you can throw some rotted compost in the bin in order to maintain that layered effect that is necessary in order for the composting process to work well.

Sure this process is a little work, but it sure is nice to have a place to get rid of organic waste anytime I like. Then down the road when I have beautiful compost to add to my potting soil, I am grateful to have done the right thing earlier, and I know that I have wasted nothing.

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GetUsedParts.com

This looks like a very useful sort of service. Say your car is broken, and maybe it's not exactly a popular car, and the part that's broken is hard to find. How do you go about finding the part you need? One possibility is to call all the junk yards in the area, but that takes a lot of time.

So, consider this welcome message:

Welcome to Get Used Parts, the easy way to find used auto parts online. Designed to help people with any level of car experience find used auto parts and car parts, Get Used Parts puts you in touch with thousands of junk yards coast to coast for a free, easy online solution. Now you can find used auto parts without scraping through salvage yards. Whether you are a full-time mechanic or a person who thinks cars just get people from point A to point B, locating car parts online guarantees great automotive parts while keeping your hands clean.

That's what they do, is serve as a middleman between you and thousands of junk yards. Instead of calling the junk yards yourself, you enter your request into the web site and it sends queries to the junk yards for you.

Since my car is missing its radio (actually, I took the radio out) I just tested the site. While the site did not work with Safari, it works fine with Firefox (Mac). It's very easy to use the site to describe the part you need. The site knows all the makes and models of cars, and the kind of parts that goes into each one. This is very reassuring in that it will help you describe the part correctly even if you don't know all the technically correct words.

I discovered this site here: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000907.php

Consumerism and choice and lack of choice

Imagine you're driving with your kids. You stop at a gas station to fill the tank, and they're hungry or thirsty. You didn't carry any drinks or snacks with you, fortunately the gas station sells some. But you look at the choices, and they're all some form of overly sugarfied junk food. What do you do?

Imagine you want to buy a car. The essential desire is to travel around town, and occasional long trips, at relative high speed, relative comfort, and a great deal of freedom. You go to the automobile store and find the choices are gasoline or diesel burning (except if you hunt hard enough). What do you do?

Imagine you want to be informed about the world. You look around for news sources, and the easy ones to find are all owned by humongous multinational corporations that gear the "news" you receive to subtly serve the agenda of the large corporations. What do you do?

Welcome to the modern world. You have a dizzying array of choices before you, but they're all essentially the same choice. Some kind of junk that serves the interest of the large corporation that provided you with the junk, but is actually unhealthy.

Let's think about the first example - if all the drinks or snacks you can find are highly sugared junk, then how are your kids, or you for that matter, going to have a healthy diet? It's easy enough to alternative snacks and drinks, but that's not what's stocked in the store.

If you have freedom of choice, but the choice is limited by the store owner, then do you really have freedom of choice?

The "Dancing Rabbit" ecovillage

I've recently been doing some reading about community living, and especially the ecovillage concept.

Today I want to take a look at the Dancing Rabbit ecovillage: Ecologically Sustainable Living Dancing Rabbit is an ecovillage set amid the hills and prairies of rural northeastern Missouri. Our goal is to live ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives, and to share the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle.

First, what's an ecovillage? The Global Ecovillage Network tries to answer that question thusly: Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people, who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more.

Sounds rather idealistic, doesn't it?

I can imagine that taking a group of American individualistically oriented ego's and trying to live communally, well, that's gotta be a very interesting experiment indeed. For example:

Decision Making

We make our decisions using a combination of empowered committees and full group consensus. For many years we used full group consensus for all decisions, but as we continued to grow more decisions had to be made and more time spent in meetings. Many people became uncomfortable with the amount of time spent in meetings and became willing, even eager, to give up some control of the decision making process in exchange for having to spend less time in meetings. So bit by bit the group agreed to moving pieces of the decision making process away from the full group and into committees empowered to make decisions in certain areas.

If you're going to live communally, then how do decisions get made that affect the whole? And, yes, there are going to be decisions that affect the whole. For example the Dancing Rabbit site shows shows a
common house serves the communal needs of the group. As they say:

Planning out the building, raising funds and doing the actual construction has been a learning experience for us. Coming to consensus on these and other issues about the community building was extremely challenging.

No one person owns the common house, the community does, and the community acted together to create it. However I can only imagine the kinds of arguments that went into creating consensus around the details of that building.

Here's one that bothers me, and I haven't ever even visited: Vehicles: At DR members don't own private vehicles, instead a car co-op provides for our transportation needs. Elsewhere on the site it says that DR members are not allowed to own their own vehicles. Instead they share ownership of the cars in the cooperative and are expected to cooperatively organize trips to town etc.

To me this seems heavy handed. But maybe that's a bit of American consumerism and individualism speaking through me, that isn't what I really believe? On their site they give Sustainability Guidelines and reading between the lines of that agreement you can see why individually owned cars would be banned. Namely, individually owned cars are very unsustainable -- witness the current war in Iraq for why I say that.

In general what I see on the site is very interesting and encouraging. Most of their buildings are made in the straw bale fashion, which is very sustainable and can create very sturdy buildings. They are tending to do organic gardening to grow their own food, and to live in a simple lifestyle. A lot of my thinking says that "we" don't need all the gobbledygook of gadgetry that fills our lives, and that "we" might well be healthier and happier by owning less things. Not that I've done a terrific job of doing that in my own life, still I applaud them for trying. American consumerism is deeply ingrained in those of us who grew up here, and to live differently means confronting all the egoic conditioning that "we" took in through growing up in this country.

Let me close by saying that it's difficult talking about a community in this way. I have never visited them, I only know them through what's said on their web site. A community is a vibrant expression of the people who jointly create that community. There is no way I can have done justice to these people in these few paragraphs.