Friday 26 March 2010
Sunday 27 December 2009
Dignified and un-degraded treatment of passengers by security officials in European airports
I've just submitted my second petition to the European Parliament. The first was requesting policies to enforce a mandatory 10 year warranty on all domestic and personal electronic appliances (to ensure that the rate of obsolescence of devices stops increasing, and products are designed to last).
The text of my new petition is as follows:
The security regulations and practices in place in European airports, by which passengers are subject to (public) body searches, forced to remove vestiments, the private contents of their luggage exposed and examined, and subject to the prepotence of designated officials, violate at least two articles in the legally binding (by the Treaty of Lisbon) Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, namely:
- Chapter I, Article 1 - Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.
- Chapter I, Article 4 - No one shall be subjected to (…) degrading treatment or punishment.
This is not acceptable, and I therefore petition the European Parliament to put in place and enforce policies that ensure the dignified and un-degraded treatment of passengers. Namely forbidding the following practices:
- Enforcing removal of vestiments
- Performing body searches unless in strict privacy by a police officer and only when the same conditions as apply to investigations of criminal offenses by suspects are verified.
- Publicly disclosing the contents of luggage.
The security of citizens is also a guaranteed right (under Chapter II, Article 6 of the same Charter), so airport authorities have to research and deploy less intrusive processes to ensure security for the specific case of air transportation.
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Friday 30 October 2009
Factory farming and global warming
If you are busy changing light bulbs, dreaming of a hybrid car (or maybe you already drive one) it's possible that you worry about the consequences of global warming. If you do seriously worry but you are a regular meat eater then this documentary is for you. Bad news: it's time for you to rethink your diet. A vegetarian in a Hummer is greener than a meat eater in a Prius. This and other incredible facts about the impact of factory farming on climate changes are revealed on "Meat the truth". The truth which was a little too inconvenient for Al Gore. The good news: you can start with one vegetarian day every week :) Good for the planet and all the animals living on it (you, me and everybody else included).
Tuesday 25 August 2009
the financial crisis...
I wrote a post in August last year where then I described my perception of the way financial systems operate and the eminent risks of collapse, this was before Lehman Brothers failed (16 Sep.) and the crisis became official...
Our governments, stood and watched while this shadow banking system and the money they created and handled grew uncontrollably. Probably they were making big profits and the governments were collecting their share in tax, or they saw the share of importance of these transactions relative to GDP growth increase and found it good for their economic indicators... even when the first warnings came with the Bear Stearns funds collapsing in 2007 and before that of the Long Term Capital Management in 1998, still no regulation was introduced that would require these banks to fulfill similar requirements to depository banks as to have minimum reserves of liquid assets (gold, money, savings) to cover the needs to repay investors. As a result a lot of money, in the form of debt and backed by "toxic" assets (subprime mortgages) instead of real value (money, savings, gold, resources), entered circulation. As more debt seemed to originate more economic activity, it was allowed to grow, and with the interests that apply on loans over loans over loans it did grow... and keeps growing...
But unless a miracle happens, it will never be repaid... because we cannot possibly keep up with it with our incomes (not even with a major technological breakthrough or productivity increase, the economy cannot possibly create more value than the limits given by the size of the population, their demand for a comfortable life, their time available to produce and spend and the finite resources available), so that part of the debt that cannot be repaid will either mean failed banks or failed corporations (and corresponding unemployment increase) or failed privates (and homeless people), or a bit of all... I'm hoping that a sudden realization of this logic by the financial system operators brings about a loss of trust and a major bank collapse, and even if corporations fail and money disappears, we at least keep our houses.
Loosing the job is not the worst that can happen, if people are willing to work, there are ways to quickly set alternative monetary systems (such as LETS and others) that allow people to exchange goods and services with each other within communities. Secondly, this happening governments would eventually, re-nationalize the full banking system, re-take control of the monetary policies and re-start issuing money against value actually produced in the country and making it available as credit for corporations and privates, at low or no interest.
Lending with interest is such an attractive activity because you can rip enormous profits without working much... but it is unsustainable in the long term as it causes debt to increase exponentially. Most of the money that exists is backed up by debt (a lot of it toxic), so there is no money available to pay the interest on that debt, which comes on top. Unless banks create more debt to pay those interests, which in turn require more interest to be payed... hence the exponential growth of debt...
This financial phenomena has already brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, and caused the Catholic Church to proclaim lending with interest a sin. The only ones who were allowed to do it were the Jewish people, who came to become prominent bankers and wealthy people, and then blamed by the misery of others leading Europe to the holocaust of second world war... lending with interest is also correlated with inflation, and being able to influence the interest rate gives central banks the capability (or the illusion) to control the inflation in the long term, although they can never be sure what the consequence of their policies will be... however it seems if there were no interests and governments were capable of adequately manage the amount of money in circulation, inflation should purely depend on demand and supply. Focus would turn to making markets more transparent and with more competition as to keep prices stable.
If there is no interest associated to giving credit, there is no profit to be made and there is no reason why privates would want to do it. Therefore banking would have to be purely a state business, as is education, justice, and security... there would be no interest on loans, but also no interest on deposits (as they are also loans from privates to banks).
From the point of view of a single transaction, it seems to make sense that interests are due. After all if Jim lends Jack 100 dollars for a year, and Jack goes off and doubles that money by improving his business or spends the money in something nice, but works hard the rest of the year to re-earn it, and simply returns back the 100 dollars, then Jack won from the situation, and Jim lost because he could not use that money for a year and he took a risk of not recovering it. So it seems that a compensation is owed to Jim for his loss and the risk he took.
But from a wider perspective, loans are not necessarily made between individuals, but from a community which has a lump of idle money (savings) that would anyway not be used in the short term. And if Jack uses the loan to improve his business or for purchasing something, that money goes to pay salaries in the community, to produce goods or services that the community can enjoy, or to pay for products and services produced by the community, in any case the community benefits from it, even if they risked loosing it in the hands of Jack. So interest is not necessarily due, if the community trusts Jack to do well with the money and repay it. The overall benefits for all would surely surpass the risks of defaulting.
As communities evolve beyond the basic needs of survival and security (which still embeds the spirits of our older generations that lived the war and poverty), new levels of consciousness arise among the new generations and a sense of purpose and altruism necessarily evolves (that's one of the reasons a lot of young people are now concerned about the environment, volunteer work and fair trading - refer to Maslow's psychology insights on this, or Ken Wilber's levels of consciousness), this necessarily re-positions economic views in a different perspective. The view that each person acts selfishly to maximize his wealth or profit which guided economic principles of the sixties/seventies until now are now outdated and should give place to concepts as Altruist Economics proposed by Robin Upton
Our governments, stood and watched while this shadow banking system and the money they created and handled grew uncontrollably. Probably they were making big profits and the governments were collecting their share in tax, or they saw the share of importance of these transactions relative to GDP growth increase and found it good for their economic indicators... even when the first warnings came with the Bear Stearns funds collapsing in 2007 and before that of the Long Term Capital Management in 1998, still no regulation was introduced that would require these banks to fulfill similar requirements to depository banks as to have minimum reserves of liquid assets (gold, money, savings) to cover the needs to repay investors. As a result a lot of money, in the form of debt and backed by "toxic" assets (subprime mortgages) instead of real value (money, savings, gold, resources), entered circulation. As more debt seemed to originate more economic activity, it was allowed to grow, and with the interests that apply on loans over loans over loans it did grow... and keeps growing...
But unless a miracle happens, it will never be repaid... because we cannot possibly keep up with it with our incomes (not even with a major technological breakthrough or productivity increase, the economy cannot possibly create more value than the limits given by the size of the population, their demand for a comfortable life, their time available to produce and spend and the finite resources available), so that part of the debt that cannot be repaid will either mean failed banks or failed corporations (and corresponding unemployment increase) or failed privates (and homeless people), or a bit of all... I'm hoping that a sudden realization of this logic by the financial system operators brings about a loss of trust and a major bank collapse, and even if corporations fail and money disappears, we at least keep our houses.Loosing the job is not the worst that can happen, if people are willing to work, there are ways to quickly set alternative monetary systems (such as LETS and others) that allow people to exchange goods and services with each other within communities. Secondly, this happening governments would eventually, re-nationalize the full banking system, re-take control of the monetary policies and re-start issuing money against value actually produced in the country and making it available as credit for corporations and privates, at low or no interest.
Lending with interest is such an attractive activity because you can rip enormous profits without working much... but it is unsustainable in the long term as it causes debt to increase exponentially. Most of the money that exists is backed up by debt (a lot of it toxic), so there is no money available to pay the interest on that debt, which comes on top. Unless banks create more debt to pay those interests, which in turn require more interest to be payed... hence the exponential growth of debt...
This financial phenomena has already brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, and caused the Catholic Church to proclaim lending with interest a sin. The only ones who were allowed to do it were the Jewish people, who came to become prominent bankers and wealthy people, and then blamed by the misery of others leading Europe to the holocaust of second world war... lending with interest is also correlated with inflation, and being able to influence the interest rate gives central banks the capability (or the illusion) to control the inflation in the long term, although they can never be sure what the consequence of their policies will be... however it seems if there were no interests and governments were capable of adequately manage the amount of money in circulation, inflation should purely depend on demand and supply. Focus would turn to making markets more transparent and with more competition as to keep prices stable.
If there is no interest associated to giving credit, there is no profit to be made and there is no reason why privates would want to do it. Therefore banking would have to be purely a state business, as is education, justice, and security... there would be no interest on loans, but also no interest on deposits (as they are also loans from privates to banks).
From the point of view of a single transaction, it seems to make sense that interests are due. After all if Jim lends Jack 100 dollars for a year, and Jack goes off and doubles that money by improving his business or spends the money in something nice, but works hard the rest of the year to re-earn it, and simply returns back the 100 dollars, then Jack won from the situation, and Jim lost because he could not use that money for a year and he took a risk of not recovering it. So it seems that a compensation is owed to Jim for his loss and the risk he took.
But from a wider perspective, loans are not necessarily made between individuals, but from a community which has a lump of idle money (savings) that would anyway not be used in the short term. And if Jack uses the loan to improve his business or for purchasing something, that money goes to pay salaries in the community, to produce goods or services that the community can enjoy, or to pay for products and services produced by the community, in any case the community benefits from it, even if they risked loosing it in the hands of Jack. So interest is not necessarily due, if the community trusts Jack to do well with the money and repay it. The overall benefits for all would surely surpass the risks of defaulting.
As communities evolve beyond the basic needs of survival and security (which still embeds the spirits of our older generations that lived the war and poverty), new levels of consciousness arise among the new generations and a sense of purpose and altruism necessarily evolves (that's one of the reasons a lot of young people are now concerned about the environment, volunteer work and fair trading - refer to Maslow's psychology insights on this, or Ken Wilber's levels of consciousness), this necessarily re-positions economic views in a different perspective. The view that each person acts selfishly to maximize his wealth or profit which guided economic principles of the sixties/seventies until now are now outdated and should give place to concepts as Altruist Economics proposed by Robin Upton
Sunday 23 August 2009
tough shoulders needed...
“The entire world economy rests on the consumer; if he ever stops spending money he doesn't have on things he doesn't need -- we're done for."
Bill Bonner, author, publisher and columnist on economics and money
of permanent economic growth
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
Tuesday 4 August 2009
Monetary Reform now!!
Watch this documentary. Money as Debt II by Paul Grignon
As I've already discussed here, the financial system as it is, is the biggest threat to our survival, it needs to be reformed urgently.
As I've already discussed here, the financial system as it is, is the biggest threat to our survival, it needs to be reformed urgently.
Thursday 21 May 2009
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