Raven Coal Mine Podcast

Here is a podcast from Radio CHLY - an interview with Ron Sakolsky and Sheila Nopper about the current state of the proposed Raven Coal mine at Fanny Bay on Vancouver Island. If this mine goes through it will have a devastating effect upon the surrounding waters and communities. Click on http://chly.dailysplice.com/bethemedia/

Greed

I guess by now you heard of the Ohio guy whose work “buddies” won $99 million and refused to share it with him because he was too sick to make the payment. There were 23 employees in the pool, a total of $4.304,343 each. Minus the sick guy, their winnings would be $4.500,000. Even though each one of these greed heads would have $4.3 million they would screw their co-worker for the sake of $195,000! Before you might dismiss this as typical of the USA, something even worse occurred in Canada about 20 years ago. A man in Quebec and his daughter won $7 million. Yet the daughter forgot to put her dollar in that week and Dear Old Dad denied her a share of the winnings. Hey, your own daughter, mon ostie calisse de tabarnac!

The excuse given to such a CEO or Ayn Randish-level of selfishness is a literal interpretation of the situation. You can just hear them whining, “but you didn't pay that week!” Such people have no ethics, only a legalistic conception of reality. Very much like our legal system, in fact, which works “to the letter of the law”, and in most cases, morality and intent be damned. Such literal-mindedness is a form of insanity. But we see this insanity all the time with judges who treat civil disobedience cases like common crimes and refuse to allow the ethical reasons behind these actions to be voiced. (The late Merv Wilkinson, was arrested for CD at Clayoquot Sound in 1995 and the judge called him “unrepentant”. Now just what in hell was Merv to repent? Sick SOBs on the benches) But when those at the top are crazy and greedy, who can blame those at the bottom – like our imbecile lottery winners – for imitating them?

One thing should be understood about greed – it isn't really about money. $4 million and you are set up for life, who really needs more? And if you had $100 million you could live like a potentate. Why want ever more money, when in the real world of goods and services you have more than you could ever want? I suspect the greedy are weak, insecure people who need to bolster themselves with the symbols of power and “making it” that money can buy. But money can't buy you love, and even less can it buy you respect, which is what these poor fools really want. A million dollar house makes you look like a somebody, and a five million dollar house even more of a somebody, or so their thinking goes. Don't all those vinyl-sided, four car garage, 4000 square foot, cul-de-sac, (1) McMansions that seemingly every “middle-class” person” desires just scream, “I have arrived, I am somebody!” Even though that “somebody” is kitchy, tacky, shallow and weak, and with a little luck will die at an early age of arteriosclerosis. Of course the problem arises that in an entire suburb of these bulimic monstrosities it is hard to play that game for long, but they can always beat on the poor, I suppose.

1. Which in French means “arse end of a bag” which says it all.

CAPITALISM DIDN'T INVENT ANYTHING

This was written back in July 2005, but the issue came up recently in a posting in Renegade Eye Blog, so I am running it again...

Apologists for capitalism like to lay claim for all the good things developed during the last 200 years. Wouldn't have happened without capitalist entrepreneurs, they say. And this is the reason that these entrepreneurs must be rewarded with colossal salaries and patent monopolies.

Trouble is, with this happy scenario, is inventors don't invent to become fabulously wealthy. There are legions of garage and basement-based inventors, and none of them are rich. Some like Edison and Ford do become rich, but in the beginning they weren't and yet they still invented. Inventing is their art, and like artists they will do so whether they are financially rewarded or not.

While financially successful inventors become capitalists as a matter of course, few inventors are themselves capitalists to begin with. The most common source of invention in the 19th and early 20th Century was the skilled worker. Edison and the Wright Brothers are the prime examples. Morse, Fulton, and Ericsson were artists. Watt an instrument maker. Edison a railway telegrapher. Kelvin, DeForest, (radio) Farnsworth, (TV) Bell, Faraday, Davie were scientists. Eastman (camera) an office clerk. Ford, and Howe (sewing machine) were machinists. Cyrus McCormack was a farmer.

Note that all great inventions are connected with a person's name. Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design. (1)The old inventors were practical people trying to find the simplest and most workable solution to a problem. The bureaucrats are merely looking for a marketing angle or a way of cheapening the cost, to which they will cheerfully sacrifice design.

Capitalism, and this is well known, suppresses inventions if they harm profits. Way back in the 1830's steam powered buses were running across England. The coaching industry and railways crushed the steam coaches by getting Parliament to enact the infamous "red flag law".(2.) Nicola Tesla found a way to transmit electricity without wires, his backer, J.P. Morgan, pulled the plug on him and a campaign of slander against Tesla was launched in the newspapers. A tacit agreement among the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US put the revolutionary Tucker car out of business.

Apologists for the corporate system claim that capital's promotion through advertising and large scale production brings new improved goods to the masses and as a result brings the price down. But people know a good thing when they see it and don't need to be propagandized into buying something. No mass advertising was necessary to switch from flint and steel to matches, or candles to coal oil lamps and then to electricity. Advertising is mostly a way of getting people to buy what they don't need or to get a larger share of the market for a product that is in no way different from that of the so-called competition. (Think of Coke vs. Pepsi)

While it is true that an economy of scale is needed to produce complex goods like aircraft, automobiles and large ships, it really doesn't apply to most items and services. Does the world really need and benefit from multinational corporations frying hamburgers, brewing beer, baking bread, manufacturing cheese, bottling soft drinks, or providing janitorial services? I think not. The quality of these goods and services is usually much better when delivered by small or local firms. If you want good beer you buy from a microbrewery not Molsons or Coors. Good bread is only found at local bakeries, mass production bread is only fit for pigs. MacDo burgers are crap and Kraft cheese has no taste.

1. Things have gotten insanely and unnecessarily complex. Why should you need a manual to operate your car radio-CD player? Why did they abolish the on-off switch for cell phones and pagers? Why are "help menus" so unhelpful?
2. The law by which any "horseless carriage" had to be preceded by a man bearing a red flag. This law, which wasn't killed until 1896, effectively gave France and Germany a big head start in the auto industry.