Religion is the answer to man's humanity. The two great sources of suffering are loneliness and death, the perception of the end of existence of self. Religion, Marx's "opiate of the masses" is offered as the cure for these. It offers a strong group affiliation that will not be overcome by other group or individual values, with a morality to protect the integrity of the community. And in one form or another, it promises eternal life, the end of death. Each major religion embodies the words and insights of some wise person who thought about life and proposed guides on how it might be lived successfully. Every religion has evolutionary survival as its basic value, though few acknowledge evolution as a reality!
The great irony is that as groups coalesce around a specific body of wisdom, t become hostile to groups that embody another wisdom, and this often leads to violence and death. The insight that is meant to ease the fear of death only makes it that much more likely to occur! And this is not the result of any particular teaching, but, across humanity, wars between religious groups have been frequent and violent. The "cure" for death has lethal side effects.
Is there no solution to this? After centuries of religious wars, and two world wars, Europeans seem to be reducing their commitment to religious institutions, and becoming more secular. The Islamic countries, unified by Ottoman imperial power, have fragmented into traditional religious subgroups, and ignited a series of wars, with the help of western nations that reflect their religious differences. The belief that you get to heaven sooner by dying in battle only allows the escape from intolerable features of earthly life. War as a solution to human suffering is a cruel solution indeed. And the world is moving toward it.
One answer is to make everyday human life pleasant enough to be worth living. This is a social and economic challenge to society, not simply a religious one, but there is a morality to social and economic decisions. The marxist solution to a fair society has proven no more valid than the capitalist model it intended to replace. The problem is not in the theory, but in the human capacity to find balance in life.
How do you create a society in which each person is fairly valued for her ability to contribute to the community, and still recognize that some persons are more gifted than others? And who can be trusted to decide? This is the social challenge of living effectively in groups that manage the loneliness of human life. This is the morality of economic planning and the intersection of religion and economics. The current Pope Francis is noteworthy for his efforts to address the issues of social inequality within the confines of Catholicism. The wealth inequality gap that has ballooned in the US, and in the world at large, indicates that the process for valuing people is totally out of balance at this time. The political pressure of the wealthy to preserve and expand their relative wealth in current US society, with notable exceptions like Warren Buffett, are clear signs that our society does not understand the moral basis of economics, and will cause more suffering as a result until the process is re-balanced.
This will not come by praying. And it will not come by returning to a traditional patriarchal religious system, as is clear from the current battles in the Islamic world. The notion of right-livelihood, and respect for the environment, and the ability to value others who are different without needing to make them join your tribe ----these are the skills that are needed to create a livable human society.
The challenge of dealing with death is always the same: acceptance. Acceptance of the reality of being a living thing, and human and therefore bound by death. Illusions of immortality only devalue the importance of the present moment. When living everyday is meaningful enough for each person, then there will be no hurry to escape the present, and no need to be afraid of doing so when the time comes.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
The French Take a VACATION
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(I wrote this back in 2004 or 5. It captured my sense that the US was going off in the wrong direction, though the French had their own strange ideas. 14 years have exaggerated the differences and complicated the picture with the role of immigration in both countries.)
A recent NPR piece gives a significantly different
perspective on human values. It seems,
according to the reporter, that France guarantees each citizen a month of
vacation every year. This
includes every working citizen, and even extends to those who are
unemployed. This surely exceeds the
social tolerance of American culture.
But wait, there is more: it
seems, according to the reporter, that not all French citizens are accepting
this right (or is it a responsibility?) and going on vacation. So the French government has assigned
counselors the task of identifying why certain families do not choose to go,
and then counseling or educating them so that they will begin to enjoy this
benefit.
To the average American,
this seems truly “over the top”:
it typifies the peculiar French culture and its seeming deviance from
any rational course of action. How can
we make sense of this culture, with its concern for art, fine food and wine,
and this apparent obsession for the relaxation of its citizens?
While still nominally a capitalist economy, France shows an
unusual concern for the well being and lifestyle of its citizens. According to capitalist principles, the
primary concern for the individual or the state should be the return on
expended capital, ie money or its equivalent.
As Marx eloquently pointed out, humans are equivalent to “labor”, and
represent a cost (or, more recently, a “consumer”). It is the job of the human consumer to
allocate his/her capital for whatever vacation he or she may choose. For the French government to encourage or
demand that the citizen choose vacation is to reverse the capitalist flow. Perhaps the wily French have calculated that
the increased consumption, which occurs during the vacations of the French,
helps pay for the cost of encouraging this, or even covers the cost of lost
production to the economy. (Probably
not.) Surely there are other ways to
stimulate consumer demand that are more product specific and not so geared to
improving the lives of the citizens.
France is not REALLY a dedicated capitalist
system. As a country they put far too
much emphasis on quality of life, REGARDLESS OF THE PROVEN ECONOMIC
RETURN. A country that is so concerned
about culture, or the preservation of language, or the careful preparation of food, even to the
point of being too expensive to create truly “profitable restaurant chains”
cannot claim to really be capitalist.
While its social welfare system is extensive, it is not so extensive to justify being
considered Socialist. And what’s more,
many of the cultural concerns of the French are not part of the social welfare
system.
In the end we must conclude that the French are concerned
about some other value, not directly related to return on capital, and therefore not readily translated into
American language or culture. It is no
wonder that they remain such a mystery.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Thoreau at 200
H. D. Thoreau would be 200 July 12th. There has been much finger pointing over recent changes in national policy regarding conservation. Let's assume that there is reasonable evidence that the earth is getting warmer, overall. Also assume that human activity makes some contribution to this warming, though the percentage is unknown. And for that matter, if the entire world population became totally involved in radically reducing greenhouse gases and other conservation measures, no one knows how much that would slow global warming if any, and how long it would take to have an impact. So climate change deniers and conservationists have in common the inability to translate observable data on global warming into the "correction of" global warming at a defined rate of improvement. Thoreau was a surveyor and scientific observer of Nature, and he would have been concerned about this lack of information.
The verbal battle between the "deniers" and the "conservationists" is intense and both sides call on scientific studies, some of which are useful but limited, and others are of dubious validity. This does not mean that there is no way to decide the issue. There is ample data to show that carbon emissions pollute the environment and cause public health problems. There is ample data to show that the exponentially increasing human population is making the earth less habitable. And there is ample data to show that the accumulation of human waste and discarded materials (trash!) are impacting people's lives. Why then did Al Gore choose to focus on climate change as his "Inconvenient Truth" rather than pollution? Why do environmentalists so often focus on "extinction of species"("extinction is forever") as the crucial issue, rather than quality of life of human habitability? The answer is political, not scientific. Climate change and extinction are dramatic extreme situations which are presumed to be irreversible. They are presented as relatively all or none: either we prevent the earth from "warming up" or the seas rise, cities are flooded, and crops dry out = major human crisis. This would have appealed to Thoreau. Living for two years in a cabin by a lake, and withdrawing into the simplest lifestyle was his way of saying "all or none": either you give up all the useless trappings of modern (19th century) life or you don't. Most people didn't and still don't and this stance is more symbolic and media driven than practical and life focused.
If we want to be "measured" conservationists we might start with a few simple assumptions:
1) set aside some land for wilderness and natural beauty and do not develop it, and utilize other lands effectively for economic purposes
2) regulate the discharge of toxic materials into the environment so that each person has a safe and practically healthy surrounding space
3) consume materials in such a manner that the earth and people in it are self sustaining and do not degrade its habitability.
Each of these proposals seems reasonable enough until one begins to ask "how much" and "which places" and "who must stop consuming what". For both individuals and countries these complex issues became controversial debates with frustrating outcomes.
The Grand Canyon is relatively preserved though parts are flooded by the Hoover dam which provides significant hydroelectric power for Nevada and California. But Glen Canyon was flooded and destroyed by the Glen Canyon dam in the 1960s despite a major political battle by the Sierra Club. This is considered a great natural loss of a beautiful environment. But without it, the silt debris in Lake Mead would likely have choked off the Hoover Dam by now and created new problems. Changing environmental patterns always have consequences not always foreseen.
New England was beset by acid rain in the 1950s, (and London terrible smog storms), and power plant emissions were presumed to be significant factors. After major political battles, emissions were reduced and coal firing greatly reduced, and now the coal industry is fighting back to try and regain jobs it will probably never use. Changes in regulation of the environment have human consequences which must be factored in.
The oceans are currently filled with unthinkable amounts of pollution, especially along coastlines, because it is easy to dump trash into them, and the assumption is made that they are so vast that the trash would somehow "disappear". It hasn't and it now forms island like accumulations in regions of current intersection. Do we really not care enough about the preservation of ocean space to find other ways (more expensive) to eliminate trash, or not create it in the first place? None of these are big headline issues for the nightly news. They are the basis for fund raising drives by organizations that advocate for conservation and the environment. Why do we need such organizations instead of a general societal goal for preserving the earth as habitable?
Thoreau's message was that it was each individual's task to balance his or her life to the needs of the natural world. But what if the person is too greedy? or doesnt have any knowledge of the natural world because he grew up in Queens(you know who you are)? or works for a company that saves money for profits by not attending to environmental issues?
Is it possible to create a sustained environmental focus based on individual initiative? The Sierra Club arranges outdoor activities and trips for its members, and the general public, including trips to National Parks and scenic areas. If everyone in the country visited natural regions every year would that help? Or would it just crowd the natural areas and make them "theme parks" with horrible traffic? Should everyone bear the additional costs of recycling trash and waste, or should the poor be required to pay less and the wealthy more? What is fair? For centuries rivers around great population centers have been polluted by waste human and industrial. The Ganges is a dramatic example, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire because of pollution, Love Canal in New York is credited with multiple cancer deaths as a result of pollution. Who should bear the cost of protecting the rivers and how to offset the disposal of chemicals and other materials if they cannot just be dumped? Environmentalists see this as clearly all-or-none: stop polluting, stop developing and honor the land. Commercial interests all agree except for the particular interest of theirs: stop polluting, but what I am doing doesn't have evidence that it is toxic "enough" to humans. (Why is it ok to dump any manufactured chemicals into rivers?) Political solutions are most effective when they balance the needs of both parties in the situation. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to find this balance, and no small part of this is the rhetoric of the conservation movement and its assurance that in a certain number of years the world will be irreversibly The current administration has withdrawn the US from the Paris Accords (has it really?). This backlash is the result of targeting key corporate "bogeymen" and they in turn fund political opponents. Companies do some bad things. And so do people. And getting people and companies to change is a political process best accomplished by real negotiation and not by the polarization of the current debate on both sides. And by the way, does anyone really think that the country will return to using coal as a major fuel source? How can the people impacted by this declining industry be realistically empowered to economic recovery?
The verbal battle between the "deniers" and the "conservationists" is intense and both sides call on scientific studies, some of which are useful but limited, and others are of dubious validity. This does not mean that there is no way to decide the issue. There is ample data to show that carbon emissions pollute the environment and cause public health problems. There is ample data to show that the exponentially increasing human population is making the earth less habitable. And there is ample data to show that the accumulation of human waste and discarded materials (trash!) are impacting people's lives. Why then did Al Gore choose to focus on climate change as his "Inconvenient Truth" rather than pollution? Why do environmentalists so often focus on "extinction of species"("extinction is forever") as the crucial issue, rather than quality of life of human habitability? The answer is political, not scientific. Climate change and extinction are dramatic extreme situations which are presumed to be irreversible. They are presented as relatively all or none: either we prevent the earth from "warming up" or the seas rise, cities are flooded, and crops dry out = major human crisis. This would have appealed to Thoreau. Living for two years in a cabin by a lake, and withdrawing into the simplest lifestyle was his way of saying "all or none": either you give up all the useless trappings of modern (19th century) life or you don't. Most people didn't and still don't and this stance is more symbolic and media driven than practical and life focused.
If we want to be "measured" conservationists we might start with a few simple assumptions:
1) set aside some land for wilderness and natural beauty and do not develop it, and utilize other lands effectively for economic purposes
2) regulate the discharge of toxic materials into the environment so that each person has a safe and practically healthy surrounding space
3) consume materials in such a manner that the earth and people in it are self sustaining and do not degrade its habitability.
Each of these proposals seems reasonable enough until one begins to ask "how much" and "which places" and "who must stop consuming what". For both individuals and countries these complex issues became controversial debates with frustrating outcomes.
The Grand Canyon is relatively preserved though parts are flooded by the Hoover dam which provides significant hydroelectric power for Nevada and California. But Glen Canyon was flooded and destroyed by the Glen Canyon dam in the 1960s despite a major political battle by the Sierra Club. This is considered a great natural loss of a beautiful environment. But without it, the silt debris in Lake Mead would likely have choked off the Hoover Dam by now and created new problems. Changing environmental patterns always have consequences not always foreseen.
New England was beset by acid rain in the 1950s, (and London terrible smog storms), and power plant emissions were presumed to be significant factors. After major political battles, emissions were reduced and coal firing greatly reduced, and now the coal industry is fighting back to try and regain jobs it will probably never use. Changes in regulation of the environment have human consequences which must be factored in.
The oceans are currently filled with unthinkable amounts of pollution, especially along coastlines, because it is easy to dump trash into them, and the assumption is made that they are so vast that the trash would somehow "disappear". It hasn't and it now forms island like accumulations in regions of current intersection. Do we really not care enough about the preservation of ocean space to find other ways (more expensive) to eliminate trash, or not create it in the first place? None of these are big headline issues for the nightly news. They are the basis for fund raising drives by organizations that advocate for conservation and the environment. Why do we need such organizations instead of a general societal goal for preserving the earth as habitable?
Thoreau's message was that it was each individual's task to balance his or her life to the needs of the natural world. But what if the person is too greedy? or doesnt have any knowledge of the natural world because he grew up in Queens(you know who you are)? or works for a company that saves money for profits by not attending to environmental issues?
Is it possible to create a sustained environmental focus based on individual initiative? The Sierra Club arranges outdoor activities and trips for its members, and the general public, including trips to National Parks and scenic areas. If everyone in the country visited natural regions every year would that help? Or would it just crowd the natural areas and make them "theme parks" with horrible traffic? Should everyone bear the additional costs of recycling trash and waste, or should the poor be required to pay less and the wealthy more? What is fair? For centuries rivers around great population centers have been polluted by waste human and industrial. The Ganges is a dramatic example, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire because of pollution, Love Canal in New York is credited with multiple cancer deaths as a result of pollution. Who should bear the cost of protecting the rivers and how to offset the disposal of chemicals and other materials if they cannot just be dumped? Environmentalists see this as clearly all-or-none: stop polluting, stop developing and honor the land. Commercial interests all agree except for the particular interest of theirs: stop polluting, but what I am doing doesn't have evidence that it is toxic "enough" to humans. (Why is it ok to dump any manufactured chemicals into rivers?) Political solutions are most effective when they balance the needs of both parties in the situation. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to find this balance, and no small part of this is the rhetoric of the conservation movement and its assurance that in a certain number of years the world will be irreversibly The current administration has withdrawn the US from the Paris Accords (has it really?). This backlash is the result of targeting key corporate "bogeymen" and they in turn fund political opponents. Companies do some bad things. And so do people. And getting people and companies to change is a political process best accomplished by real negotiation and not by the polarization of the current debate on both sides. And by the way, does anyone really think that the country will return to using coal as a major fuel source? How can the people impacted by this declining industry be realistically empowered to economic recovery?
Thursday, June 15, 2017
How wealth inequality subverts the rule of law
The New York Times recently published an article that highlights a special issue in wealth inequality: how the very rich protect their money. (Permalink = http://nyti.ms/2gIYlf9 ). A wealthy couple who were both born in other countries but have lived and worked mostly in Florida, are getting divorced. Their work involved several businesses that offered services over the internet while delivering little and have been the subject of suits by several state attorneys general. In response to these suits, the husband took steps to move his wealth "offshore" and put it into accounts in locations impervious to legal attack in the United States. His wife claims not to have known about this, and to be surprised, when they filed for divorce, that she too has no access to this money in the divorce proceedings. She hired attorneys specially skilled in tracking "hidden" funds.
At one level, this is about the breakup of an unhappy marriage and how it leads to a fight over money to deal with the emotional distress. But it also tells something about the super-rich. The couple had several different homes in different countries and spent time living away in order to qualify for favorable tax rates based on where they were in residence. The husband spent little time in the US to avoid being vulnerable to legal proceedings. The suits against the various companies allege consumer fraud and even if this is not proven, it seems that the companies generated enrichment mostly for the owner(s?) and for the legal and accounting staff hired to sequester the wealth.
In the tension between the legal structure of local jurisdictions, and the protective desires of the super rich, individuals will make every effort to escape the regulation of the local system. And this is equally true for large multinational corporations. Apple, a tech darling, is known for sequestering much of its profits in a derivative company in Ireland where it pays much lower taxes. For some time, Switzerland was famous for a banking system which would allow wealthy from other countries to hold money in "secret" accounts, not readily accessible to foreign legal proceedings, though reportedly this has recently improved, and the Swiss have been replaced by several other banking havens. If we understand the "rule of law" as rules administered by a specific jurisdiction, then this story is about the super rich and major corporations do not believe they are subject to the jurisdiction or rule of law of the places where they earn their wealth!
And it would be a mistake to see this only as an offshore issue for the US. A "60 minutes" story repeated twice in the last year, shows how someone, pretending to represent a wealthy foreigner, is offered help in sequestering money by New York attorneys (not all of those approached agreed!) to protect their wealth from the local countries from whence they are escaping. There are super rich everywhere who, for one reason or another, wish to protect their money from local jurisdictions and legal suits and there are cadres of experts for hire to find ways to do so. Though the story in the New York Times features the wife's outrage at discovering that she is "locked out", in reality the entire country is "locked out". Such people believe their wealth can protect them from having to deal with their local society including litigation and tax laws. They believe that their wealth places them above the law.
This gives a different meaning to being super rich. It is not about how much you can buy or own, or how much you can enjoy your life. It is about how much you can "control" your life circumstances to avoid the consequences of your actions. Though you may have to live in special havens, avoid previous partners who have claims on your money, and subject yourself to other constraints to control your fortune. This is not a problem that can be solved by one country alone. Such transfers can only be managed by a system of international coordination of banking. And the rules protecting the rights of legal jurisdictions must be part of this process. The world is far from having that sort of cooperation. And it is not clear that the current US government sees this as a problem.
At one level, this is about the breakup of an unhappy marriage and how it leads to a fight over money to deal with the emotional distress. But it also tells something about the super-rich. The couple had several different homes in different countries and spent time living away in order to qualify for favorable tax rates based on where they were in residence. The husband spent little time in the US to avoid being vulnerable to legal proceedings. The suits against the various companies allege consumer fraud and even if this is not proven, it seems that the companies generated enrichment mostly for the owner(s?) and for the legal and accounting staff hired to sequester the wealth.
In the tension between the legal structure of local jurisdictions, and the protective desires of the super rich, individuals will make every effort to escape the regulation of the local system. And this is equally true for large multinational corporations. Apple, a tech darling, is known for sequestering much of its profits in a derivative company in Ireland where it pays much lower taxes. For some time, Switzerland was famous for a banking system which would allow wealthy from other countries to hold money in "secret" accounts, not readily accessible to foreign legal proceedings, though reportedly this has recently improved, and the Swiss have been replaced by several other banking havens. If we understand the "rule of law" as rules administered by a specific jurisdiction, then this story is about the super rich and major corporations do not believe they are subject to the jurisdiction or rule of law of the places where they earn their wealth!
And it would be a mistake to see this only as an offshore issue for the US. A "60 minutes" story repeated twice in the last year, shows how someone, pretending to represent a wealthy foreigner, is offered help in sequestering money by New York attorneys (not all of those approached agreed!) to protect their wealth from the local countries from whence they are escaping. There are super rich everywhere who, for one reason or another, wish to protect their money from local jurisdictions and legal suits and there are cadres of experts for hire to find ways to do so. Though the story in the New York Times features the wife's outrage at discovering that she is "locked out", in reality the entire country is "locked out". Such people believe their wealth can protect them from having to deal with their local society including litigation and tax laws. They believe that their wealth places them above the law.
This gives a different meaning to being super rich. It is not about how much you can buy or own, or how much you can enjoy your life. It is about how much you can "control" your life circumstances to avoid the consequences of your actions. Though you may have to live in special havens, avoid previous partners who have claims on your money, and subject yourself to other constraints to control your fortune. This is not a problem that can be solved by one country alone. Such transfers can only be managed by a system of international coordination of banking. And the rules protecting the rights of legal jurisdictions must be part of this process. The world is far from having that sort of cooperation. And it is not clear that the current US government sees this as a problem.
Economic development that destroys natural beauty
The September 19th, 2016 New Yorker magazine has a profile on Yvon Chouinard, the rock climber, adventurer, developer of new climbing hardware, and founder of the clothing company Patagonia. The profile captures the conflict between the adventurer and the businessman, and reveals a fundamental split in the agenda of the outdoor community. In keeping with Chouinard's personal values, the company has championed high risk outdoor wilderness adventures, primarily through the photographs in its catalog, while maintaining a strong support for environmental protection. The company has several initiatives to make its products more environmentally friendly and produces them with less environmental impact. (Less than other outdoor clothing manufacturers?) He is personally famous for his climbing exploits and other adventures. And the profile reveals his desire to be an environmentalist in the strongest terms. Along with a few other colleagues of his generation (now 77) his career embodies the dream of people who pursue their favorite activities and are financially rewarded at the same time --- like Hobie Alter developing his beach boats, and the Meistrell brothers who founded Body Glove wet suits.
Chouinard is not happy though. The natural world that he loved to explore and challenge is becoming crowded and overdeveloped. Ski areas to him are "golf courses" of social and real estate development. And climbing has become so popular that major climbs require scheduling by serious climbers. Surfing along the California coast is so crowded that on good days there is competition for waves that sometimes gets ugly. What happened? Success. The adventures of Chouinard and others were so appealing that more and more people were attracted to them, and bought outdoor clothing, and ropes, chock and expansion bolts, surf boards, etc. Outdoor adventure has become a major business. REI of Seattle, once a clubby supplier to hard core outdoorsy people is now a large marketer of the "outdoor lifestyle" with clothing, lessons, trips, and everything you might need to enjoy your adventure. Going outdoors is no longer for an odd group of folks who want to escape the more developed part of the world. Major climbs like Mt. Whitney and Mt. Everest must be scheduled to deal with the high demand. To be sure these are still daunting climbs requiring training and conditioning. But more and more reports indicate that some of the climbers are marginally prepared and in mortal danger if the situation turns against them. Deaths have occurred. There are still wilderness areas in several parts of the Americas, and the Himalayas. But the most desirable of these areas get very busy at the peak times of the year and it is hard to say that you are "alone in the wilderness" at those times.
Chouinard the businessman has succeeded in defining a lifestyle and a premium clothing brand that draws others to fantasize and sometimes populate the outdoors, so he is chipping away at the wilderness he is fond of, and wishes to protect. It makes no sense to focus on him personally: there is now an extensive industry of equipment, clothing, travel planning, and training all designed to make money off people wanting to be outdoors, in relatively wild and unspoiled places. A similar challenge faces the National Park Service every year when it must deal with the seasonal demand for access and utilization of its most popular parks, effectively degrading their "natural" and "wild" qualities into crowded tourist experiences. Even the Sierra Club sponsors guided wilderness trips on the justification that getting people to experience the wilderness will make them stronger advocates for it. There is a long history everywhere in the world of people discovering beautiful natural places and wanting to live around them. Housing developments are built by people wealthy enough to afford multiple homes, and the sites become real estate projects. Yvon's life story is just one poignant example of the incompatibility between the desire for natural experiences and the desire to have some economic benefit from the access.
The solution is elusive. It is possible to restrict the access to wilderness locations and require controlled reservations to enter them. This already occurs in some popular National Parks. And this effectively nullifies that sense of spontaneous wandering into wild places! There are still beautiful unrestricted natural areas in the US and other parts of the world, but the threats of development, including high end tourist development are current challenges along with natural resource development of logging, mining, and drilling. How many ski mountains, once wild places with a few lifts and some rambling shacks, have been transformed into condo cities which flood to overflowing in good snow seasons and otherwise languish. Avid skiers seem to rarely notice that the part of the mountain that is "wild and natural" has poles going up it to carry lift lines, and the base is covered with lodges and resorts that are anything but "wild and natural". Everyone is entitled to enjoy the gifts of nature in their own way, but some ways effectively nullify the benefit for others.
The only solution is changing the public's attitude toward using the natural world. Give up using it to prove what a great climber you are. Give up using it as a party space away from home with all the pleasures of home. Give up making it easy and accessible to large numbers of folks. Encourage visitors to concentrate only on seeing and understanding the natural features and beauty and not any way of exploiting or "using" it. And this includes emphasizing natural means of navigation around the sites and limited access by motorized vehicles. In short, give up trying to make money off of the natural beauty in any aggressive way, and fund access to preserve and protect the natural beauty that people initial claim to care about. One can compare the North and South rim of the Grand Canyon to see how two different ways of developing the same site result in dramatically different experiences. None of this is new. Edward Abbey had the same rants in Desert Solitaire half a century ago. And he did not slow the changes, and neither will this.
Chouinard is not happy though. The natural world that he loved to explore and challenge is becoming crowded and overdeveloped. Ski areas to him are "golf courses" of social and real estate development. And climbing has become so popular that major climbs require scheduling by serious climbers. Surfing along the California coast is so crowded that on good days there is competition for waves that sometimes gets ugly. What happened? Success. The adventures of Chouinard and others were so appealing that more and more people were attracted to them, and bought outdoor clothing, and ropes, chock and expansion bolts, surf boards, etc. Outdoor adventure has become a major business. REI of Seattle, once a clubby supplier to hard core outdoorsy people is now a large marketer of the "outdoor lifestyle" with clothing, lessons, trips, and everything you might need to enjoy your adventure. Going outdoors is no longer for an odd group of folks who want to escape the more developed part of the world. Major climbs like Mt. Whitney and Mt. Everest must be scheduled to deal with the high demand. To be sure these are still daunting climbs requiring training and conditioning. But more and more reports indicate that some of the climbers are marginally prepared and in mortal danger if the situation turns against them. Deaths have occurred. There are still wilderness areas in several parts of the Americas, and the Himalayas. But the most desirable of these areas get very busy at the peak times of the year and it is hard to say that you are "alone in the wilderness" at those times.
Chouinard the businessman has succeeded in defining a lifestyle and a premium clothing brand that draws others to fantasize and sometimes populate the outdoors, so he is chipping away at the wilderness he is fond of, and wishes to protect. It makes no sense to focus on him personally: there is now an extensive industry of equipment, clothing, travel planning, and training all designed to make money off people wanting to be outdoors, in relatively wild and unspoiled places. A similar challenge faces the National Park Service every year when it must deal with the seasonal demand for access and utilization of its most popular parks, effectively degrading their "natural" and "wild" qualities into crowded tourist experiences. Even the Sierra Club sponsors guided wilderness trips on the justification that getting people to experience the wilderness will make them stronger advocates for it. There is a long history everywhere in the world of people discovering beautiful natural places and wanting to live around them. Housing developments are built by people wealthy enough to afford multiple homes, and the sites become real estate projects. Yvon's life story is just one poignant example of the incompatibility between the desire for natural experiences and the desire to have some economic benefit from the access.
The solution is elusive. It is possible to restrict the access to wilderness locations and require controlled reservations to enter them. This already occurs in some popular National Parks. And this effectively nullifies that sense of spontaneous wandering into wild places! There are still beautiful unrestricted natural areas in the US and other parts of the world, but the threats of development, including high end tourist development are current challenges along with natural resource development of logging, mining, and drilling. How many ski mountains, once wild places with a few lifts and some rambling shacks, have been transformed into condo cities which flood to overflowing in good snow seasons and otherwise languish. Avid skiers seem to rarely notice that the part of the mountain that is "wild and natural" has poles going up it to carry lift lines, and the base is covered with lodges and resorts that are anything but "wild and natural". Everyone is entitled to enjoy the gifts of nature in their own way, but some ways effectively nullify the benefit for others.
The only solution is changing the public's attitude toward using the natural world. Give up using it to prove what a great climber you are. Give up using it as a party space away from home with all the pleasures of home. Give up making it easy and accessible to large numbers of folks. Encourage visitors to concentrate only on seeing and understanding the natural features and beauty and not any way of exploiting or "using" it. And this includes emphasizing natural means of navigation around the sites and limited access by motorized vehicles. In short, give up trying to make money off of the natural beauty in any aggressive way, and fund access to preserve and protect the natural beauty that people initial claim to care about. One can compare the North and South rim of the Grand Canyon to see how two different ways of developing the same site result in dramatically different experiences. None of this is new. Edward Abbey had the same rants in Desert Solitaire half a century ago. And he did not slow the changes, and neither will this.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
DISCOVERY OF CA 2: CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'
The movie "Pretty Woman" ends with the message from HAPPY MAN: "Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is
Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don't; but keep
on dreamin' - this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on
dreamin'. "
The historian Ken Starr wrote a series of books on the history of California from its discovery to the 1960's. They provide an introduction to the major topics and events in the state in its short but dramatic history. The first is called "Americans and the California Dream", and the subsequent volumes all carry the dream theme along in their title. I think his intention was to capture the hopes and fantasies of people coming to the state and the continuous quality of dreams in later arrivals. There have been many migrations of dreamers into the state. The first was the Junipero Sera expedition of the Spanish Missionaries that created the chain of missions on the coast. The second was the gold rush of 1849 that created San Francisco and the State as a state of the union. The third major migration of the "pioneers" in covered wagons was an amazing heroic series of journeys, described from a personal perspective by Didion in "Where I was From". The fourth was the dust bowl "Okie" migration of desperate farmers from the mid-West described in "Grapes of Wrath" and numerous films. And there have been many other smaller ones, including Chinese and Japanese settlers coming to help develop the new state. Each group came with their dreams of wealth and happiness, and some were rewarded beyond even their wildest dreams, and others ended in disaster and death, like the "Donner party".
The disparity between dreams and reality is huge. The Okies came swarming to Southern California imagining it was the Eden of their dreams, only to find themselves blocked at the borders by the previous generations of immigrants who were all too aware of how limited the opportunities were, and did not welcome more competition for the limited resources. Didion's description of Sacramento echoes the same impatience with the economic invasion of post war immigrants, who were not "settlers" and did not understand what the previous generation of "pioneers" had been through. After living here for a few years, I realize that I am no different from the other migrants to this place. I came with dreams, like being close to family, which have been realized. And others, like being part of the film industry, that have not. It is not an easy place to retire since the housing costs are high, and the scattered development makes car travel a necessity in a place where this can be very frustrating. (Driving in LA is a whole other story!) The weather is often pleasant, though not quite as promoted by the C of C. Some very wealthy people retire to LA and enjoy its charms buoyed up by their affluence, but most come with less, and struggle to find their place in a city which has embodied the extremes of rich and poor much longer than the most of the US. As always, the poor struggle most, the middle class have less coherence as they try desperately to ascend to the 1% and have more influence, and even the 1% have little influence in a place where the 0.1% are in great supply.
The irony is not lost on me. For there is a mental transformation that immigrants to California must go through after they arrive. The "dreams of California" must be replaced by the realities of sustaining daily lives in a difficult environment. At one time, the challenges were a lack of water, and very limited development. Oil, movie, aviation, military and real estate booms brought prosperity, over development, and the challenges of modern California: an overpopulated, economically competitive state the size of most countries. The "old timers" who have managed to survive here all understand: if you have not struggled to survive here, you are not really a Californian, just a "California dreamer".
The historian Ken Starr wrote a series of books on the history of California from its discovery to the 1960's. They provide an introduction to the major topics and events in the state in its short but dramatic history. The first is called "Americans and the California Dream", and the subsequent volumes all carry the dream theme along in their title. I think his intention was to capture the hopes and fantasies of people coming to the state and the continuous quality of dreams in later arrivals. There have been many migrations of dreamers into the state. The first was the Junipero Sera expedition of the Spanish Missionaries that created the chain of missions on the coast. The second was the gold rush of 1849 that created San Francisco and the State as a state of the union. The third major migration of the "pioneers" in covered wagons was an amazing heroic series of journeys, described from a personal perspective by Didion in "Where I was From". The fourth was the dust bowl "Okie" migration of desperate farmers from the mid-West described in "Grapes of Wrath" and numerous films. And there have been many other smaller ones, including Chinese and Japanese settlers coming to help develop the new state. Each group came with their dreams of wealth and happiness, and some were rewarded beyond even their wildest dreams, and others ended in disaster and death, like the "Donner party".
The disparity between dreams and reality is huge. The Okies came swarming to Southern California imagining it was the Eden of their dreams, only to find themselves blocked at the borders by the previous generations of immigrants who were all too aware of how limited the opportunities were, and did not welcome more competition for the limited resources. Didion's description of Sacramento echoes the same impatience with the economic invasion of post war immigrants, who were not "settlers" and did not understand what the previous generation of "pioneers" had been through. After living here for a few years, I realize that I am no different from the other migrants to this place. I came with dreams, like being close to family, which have been realized. And others, like being part of the film industry, that have not. It is not an easy place to retire since the housing costs are high, and the scattered development makes car travel a necessity in a place where this can be very frustrating. (Driving in LA is a whole other story!) The weather is often pleasant, though not quite as promoted by the C of C. Some very wealthy people retire to LA and enjoy its charms buoyed up by their affluence, but most come with less, and struggle to find their place in a city which has embodied the extremes of rich and poor much longer than the most of the US. As always, the poor struggle most, the middle class have less coherence as they try desperately to ascend to the 1% and have more influence, and even the 1% have little influence in a place where the 0.1% are in great supply.
The irony is not lost on me. For there is a mental transformation that immigrants to California must go through after they arrive. The "dreams of California" must be replaced by the realities of sustaining daily lives in a difficult environment. At one time, the challenges were a lack of water, and very limited development. Oil, movie, aviation, military and real estate booms brought prosperity, over development, and the challenges of modern California: an overpopulated, economically competitive state the size of most countries. The "old timers" who have managed to survive here all understand: if you have not struggled to survive here, you are not really a Californian, just a "California dreamer".
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Mar A Lago and Climate Change
Whether Donald Trump will be an effective president is unknown but there is no doubt now that he is an audacious real estate promoter. Suppose you were to buy a run down property with historical interest in Florida in 1985 and invest a bundle of money in renovating it to become an “exclusive club”. The local high society has no interest in joining and you must open the club to whoever is attracted to it. A hurricane in 2005 causes minor damage and the rising sea level makes it clear that the property on a spit on the Florida Palm Beach coast is ultimately going under water. How would you promote the property for a favorable sale?
The president- real estate promoter has options unavailable to the average developer: Spend 25 of your first 100 days there (during the Winter season when it is habitable) identifying it as the “Southern White House” for historical value. Invite world leaders from China and Japan to confer there instead of the actual White House in DC. Since local Florida investors and northeastern US investors are unlikely to be interested, investors from China or Japan are the most likely buyers. But what about the rising sea level? Just declare that “climate change is a myth”, take it out of government websites and assure potential buyers that there is nothing to worry about! What an audacious marketing strategy for an ultimately doomed property. When did President Trump realize that the rising sea level would destroy the value of the property? He started denying climate change in 2012, when the Palm Beach community was increasing funding to protect itself from rising water. So he has been anticipating this for some time. And none of this is illegal! He is entitled to own property and to visit it as other presidents have. He is entitled to entertain foreign visitors there, as Nixon did at San Clemente. And ultimately he is entitled to sell it for whatever price he can accomplish! Brilliant!
The president- real estate promoter has options unavailable to the average developer: Spend 25 of your first 100 days there (during the Winter season when it is habitable) identifying it as the “Southern White House” for historical value. Invite world leaders from China and Japan to confer there instead of the actual White House in DC. Since local Florida investors and northeastern US investors are unlikely to be interested, investors from China or Japan are the most likely buyers. But what about the rising sea level? Just declare that “climate change is a myth”, take it out of government websites and assure potential buyers that there is nothing to worry about! What an audacious marketing strategy for an ultimately doomed property. When did President Trump realize that the rising sea level would destroy the value of the property? He started denying climate change in 2012, when the Palm Beach community was increasing funding to protect itself from rising water. So he has been anticipating this for some time. And none of this is illegal! He is entitled to own property and to visit it as other presidents have. He is entitled to entertain foreign visitors there, as Nixon did at San Clemente. And ultimately he is entitled to sell it for whatever price he can accomplish! Brilliant!
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