Woody Tasch discusses destructive economics

In this three-minute video, author Woody Tasch compellingly illustrates that "Economic growth is not synonymous with well being." In fact, much of what we call "economic growth" is destructive. Woody concludes: "We can't just continue to grow our way out of our problem. In fact, 'economic growth' is often destructive.'" My strategy is to disparage the ubiquitous media reports that applaud when the GDP is "up," or when the "economy" is humming along. Those numbers assume that strip mining is better for the economy than conservation measures. They assume that rampant crime is better for the economy than fixing many of the root causes of crime-- e.g., the "war on drugs," injects violence into drug use and "allows" us to hire a lot more police officers, whereas decriminalizing drugs might cause the loss of law enforcement jobs. The many commentators who fetishize the GDP embrace a principle that prefers a violence-ridden police state. We need to dramatically shift our focus from measuring numbers of dollars flowing through the system to (admittedly more difficult task of) measuring the real quality of life.

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Comprehensive moral instruction

We've all seen many Internet lists offering suggestions for improving one's life or state of happiness. This list, by a young man named Henrick Edberg at The Positivity Blog, caught my attention today, perhaps because it includes some of my own favorite bits of productivity reminders and folk wisdom, including the "80/20 rule" and the advice to not beat yourself up for making mistakes. His list also includes a nice twist to the golden rule: Give value to get value, not the other way around. Another item on his list reminds us to express gratitude to others in order to enrich our own lives, reminding us that expressing gratitude is socially contagious. What also intrigued me was Edberg's pre-list commentary: He laments that the nuggets of advice in his list aren't taught as part of the high school curriculum.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

I think I know why there are no such classes in public schools. Teaching advice on how to navigate through the complexities of life in a positive state of mind would too often trigger discussions regarding "morality," which too often trigger discussions of specific religious teachings which, in turn, tend to anger at least some parents and students, which would then shut down the course (in public schools, anyway). I suspect that this causal chain is a big reason that so many schools tread lightly on teaching students how to navigate through life, even though there is an immense amount of information that needs to be discussed. Instead of vigorously teaching what the students need to know to be functional and virtuous, most schools ostensibly defer to families and churches (though they actually defer at least as much to pop culture, including magazines, "news" programs, television shows and movies) to fill that "moral" vacuum of students. In America, however, even "serious" teachers of morality often insist that the way to best live one's life is by obeying a standardized set of "moral" rules. Is the advice to follow any set of rules really the best approach for instructing us how to get along with each other down here on planet Earth? Is it even possible for any form of obedience to serve as the foundation for a high-functioning society? I think not. I'm going to digress at this point . . . [more . . . ]

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The power of a nickel

Look what happens to the use of plastic bags used by grocers and restaurants when you require the merchants charge five cents per bag. This is a big win for the environment:

In its first assessment of how the new law is working, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue estimates that city food and grocery establishments issued about 3.3 million bags in January, which suggests a remarkable decrease. Prior to the bag tax taking effect Jan 1, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had estimated that about 22.5 million bags were being issued per month in 2009.

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Are you ready for prices (of everything) to rise?

If you were looking for a quick, 4-paragraph introduction on the subject of Peak Oil, Bloomberg News has you covered:

Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Total SA are investing in assets that previously weren’t worth their time or money after oil-rich nations reduced access to reserves and exploration drilling faltered. Efforts to find new sources of crude and natural gas are failing more often, with San Ramon, California-based Chevron Corp.’s exploration failure rate jumping to 35 percent last year from 10 percent in 2008. Countries such as Venezuela are making it more expensive for companies to develop their resources, if they’re allowed in at all. And previously developed fields are drying up, reducing oil companies’ future supplies, or reserves. “Their No. 1 problem is reserves replacement,” said Nansen Saleri, chief executive officer at Quantum Reservoir Impact in Houston and former reservoir-management chief at Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. “That’s the elephant in the room, so that’s what they have to address.” To compensate, major producers are investing in projects they once eschewed, including geologically complex oil and gas fields, called “unconventional” by the industry to distinguish them from the easy-to-get oil and gas of earlier years.
And that is Peak Oil in a nutshell. It is real, it is here. All the cheap, easily accessible oil has been used up; the low-hanging fruit is gone. The remainder of the planet's oil, of which we still have plenty, is going to cost a great deal more to extract and refine, leading to higher prices at the pump, at the grocery store, or anywhere else that requires oil to function.

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Dumpster diving adventure

A few weeks ago, my daughters (aged 9 and 11) convinced me to go dumpster diving out in the alley behind our house in the City of St. Louis. We've gone dumpster diving a few times over the years. Based on the prior expeditions, my daughters fully expect that if they look through a few dozen dumpsters, they'll find something valuable. You see, this is America, where people through away perfectly usable toys and games, as well as furniture, appliances and clothing. And even when you don't find usable merchandise, you'll see literally tons of single-use paper and plastic being thrown out. When you see the incredible piles of discarded usable things with your own eyes, it is all-the-more astounding. Even more surprising, if you're looking the highest ratio of usable stuff, look in the dumpsters behind apartment-dwellers rather than the dumpsters behind expensive single-family homes. Perhaps it sounds disgusting to go dumpster diving. If so, get over it, because it can be far more than an anthropological field trip--it can be like winning a mini-lottery. My kids and I have found several extremely nice coats, for instance (we washed them and gave them away to friends). We once found a working DVD player. We've taken home shelves and other items of furniture. We've found dozens of toys, which merely need to be cleaned up to become usable. As I'm finding these sorts of things, I keep thinking "Why wouldn't someone take the time to donate this to Good Will of Salvation Army?" When people throw a valuable thing into the landfill, it's gone forever--what were they thinking?yard-waste Here's what we found on our recent expedition. First of all, I must digress. The City of St. Louis provides special separate dumpsters for Yard Waste Only and other dumpsters for general rubbish. On our recent expedition, I looked into 20 of of those yard-waste-only dumpsters. About half of them contained non-yard waste. This astounds me too. Why would someone screw up this incredibly sensible system for recycling vegetation by throwing plastic, food and paper into a yard waste dumpster? And here's a typical example of what you often find in a yard-waste-only dumpster: [caption id="attachment_11660" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster"]Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster[/caption] As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, people throw away massive amounts of single-use paper and plastic. Probably the biggest single category is cardboard pizza boxes. In our one-hour expedition, I probably saw 500 used pizza boxes. pizza-boxesBut we also saw huge amounts of clearly recyclable goods that were not being recycled. Hundreds of glass jars, metal cans and plastics and immense amounts of paper, all of it headed for the landfill. We also saw hundreds of pounds of colorfully-inked food packaging. All of it carefully designed to catch your eye at the store, and then you toss it into the landfill. But, it's not like you really toss it in--instead, a huge fleet of city trucks carts this packaging far away from the city in order to dump it into the landfill. It makes me wonder how many toxic chemicals were released into the environment in order to produce all of this food packaging. recycle-materialWe found several toys and many items of clothing that had been saturated in pasta sauce, meat grease or who-knows what kind of fluid. We decided to keep looking. What my girls ended up taking home for a quick clean-up was a little toy dog that they found inside of a woman's big purse. You'll see his photo below. My girls named him "Oscar" (after Sesame Street's Oscar), and he now lives with us . [caption id="attachment_11661" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Oscar"]Oscar[/caption]

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