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Monday, April 30, 2012

Pay the bill

Let's imagine we decide to pay the oxygen we use to those countries who produce it.
How would it work?

First, most of the O2/CO2 balance is "used" by countries with big industrial production which, long time ago, were the first nation to emerge with a fast economy, now it's more the "developing" countries.
This is happening because those countries normally have a lower cost for manpower, in other words because we are taking advantage of them.

This means that at first, this "O2 cost" would hit them, which is not necessarily good, however they are the ones producing the goods, so they will raise prices to cover for the extra cost.
They will need to invest to improve their industrial infrastructure to be more efficient and less pollutant, meaning prices will be even higher.

Finally they might even lose competitive advantage versus other countries, but I believe this could be positive.
Setting the same rules for everybody will push us all to have a comparable standard of life : roughly the same working hours, same life conditions, rights etc.
In the mid-long term, this would be indeed beneficial and would also limit dangerous phenomena such as massive emigration.

I believe emigration is somehow good -I emigrated myself- as it forces cultures to merge, it brings cultural richness.
What is not good is when people must leave their land to survive, generating huge migration flows that can hardly be integrate organically in the destination land.

Turning Amazzonia in a profitable resource because of its trees, is probably the only way to save it.
We even have the technology to reclaim green land from deserts, if we are not doing it now it's just because it's not profitable.
(Clean) Water is another critical resource, by reducing industrial waste, promoting a greener industry we would also save this resource.

How could it work?
We are already monitoring CO2 levels, using satellites , so we already have the data.
It would be enough to establish the price, which I believe should be 0 (zero) when the CO2/O2 balance is perfect and raise progressively as this balance worsens.
We can decide a critical level (dangerous for humans and other animals) and set the price for that level to be equal to oil : number of Kg of O2 needed to burn a barrel of oil will cost the same as a barrel of oil itself.
Intermediate prices would be calculated with a linear progression.

The cost would be paid by consumers: the more you consume, the more you pay.
I think it's fair, those costs exist in real life and they should not be hidden, for the benefit of the whole planet (and not of as small privileged "elite")

Tuesday, April 17, 2012


If we raise vertically a line along the geo-political borders of our country to the end of the atmosphere, is the oxygen contained owned by our country?
That's what we do with natural resources that are in the ground, so I think the same concept can be applied upwards.

Still, the real resource is not the Oxygen (O2) itself, while it's more the balance between it and the carbon dioxide (CO2).

If country A produces a lot of oxygen which crosses the border with country B we can still assume it's A's fault if they cannot look after their belongings.
We, from B, will freely use all the oxygen contained in our borders, period.

But what happens with the carbon dioxide that B dumps into A's borders?
Yeah, it's an old story, several global meetings, decisions, protocols were established to try to bring back the balance O2/CO2 to the correct values.

Why, if we can apply economy's laws to oil, we cannot apply them to the O2/CO2 balance, simply considering it a resource?
Does it really make sense to ask country B to "promise" they will reduce CO2 emissions?
Wouldn't it be easier that countries that produce this resource would sell it to those that use it?

Satellites, with IR imagery can calculate quite precisely how much CO2 and O2 are produced by all the countries.
Setting up a balance should be trivial.

Country A, which is probably more "rural" and with less industries than B, would benefit from maintaining its trees instead of destroying them to plant production facilities for cheap goods.
And overall the world would benefit from that too as maintaining a good balance between O2/CO2 is a common interest.
So, why isn't that happening?

Funny enough we play the "kind guys" with some of those countries that produce O2, after we steal their resources we send them "aids", meaning we lend them money usually for a very high interest rate or we give them "help" of some kind, provided they buy our weapons, medicines etc... 
We cannot even play by our own rules.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Apples and fences

It's funny how our economy works.
We trade resources, if you happen to own valuable resources there are good chances you are on the main road that brings to richness, whatever that may mean.

Say you own a land with apple trees and people think your apples are a valuable resource as they like to eat them.
Then you can sell your resource in exchange for currency that can be used to trade other resources you may need.
Overall it's quite simple, it even seems quite fair or at least it is accepted as such.
You worked you land, maybe planted the trees, you took care of them, collected the products and your effort is compensated.

That's already a bit different when we talk about "natural resources", those things you normally "simply" dig up from your land.
You did not plant them, they just happen to be there and since they are within the borders of your land, you "own" them.
That's already quite a stretch to me, but for now let's just say that individuals, companies or nations can own parts of this planet.

A typical one is mineral oil, we keep fighting wars for it (but we like to call it "democracy").
Oil is considered a valuable resource because it is "scarce" and by that we mean that we would need more than the quantity available.
On top of that the natural process that creates oil takes ages, so we define it a "non renewable" resource, which is augmenting its value.
There are rich countries whose economy is entirely sustained by their oil.

Let's for a moment assume we really need to use all that oil and let's forget at the same time that it's availability is going down each year.
The main usage of oil is to produce some kind of energy through combustion, this happens in our cars, in our heating systems, in big electrical plants etc.
So, if you have oil, can you do the magic of combustion?
Not quite, a combustion needs two different resources that are mixed together : a "fuel" and an "oxidant".
So why when you are at the gas station you just buy fuel?
That's because you are stealing the oxidant!
Your car gets oxygen from the atmosphere, your engine would stop if you try to drive underwater because it would ne be able to reach the oxidant it badly needs.  

I hear you saying that the oxygen is "free for all", so you cannot actually steal something which is free.
Is it really free? Why?
We just said it is a resource which is needed as much as oil in the combustion, so why it does not have a value?
The answer, with the logic of our economy, is : because it is an "non scarce" resource, on the opposite of oil.
The real reason, obviously it a different one (as oxygen IS actually scarce, I will explain why next time) : because you cannot pack the oxygen produced by trees in barrels and sell it, like we do with oil.

Back to our apples, it's like having a tree protected by a fence, where you cannot reach the apples, and another tree, also owned by someone, where you can easily reach the apples.
If you simply get those apples without paying for them, wouldn't it be stealing in both situations?

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Am I poor?

Ok, there is a crisis out there, I don't know where you live, but I guess you should have noticed by now.
I am not asking myself if I am poor or not, I believe it's difficult to give a strict definition, I can only say I don't feel poor at all.
I know I have way more than I need, so I would define myself as "rich", but I know that others in my situation would think otherwise.
I think it's easy for me to be rich because I really have basic needs : a beer and a yougurt in my fridge are pretty much what I need.

Recently I have seen scary interviews on tv or on the newspapers.
There is a "OMG, we are all doomed" feeling around... which is probably true, but I feel there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Recently, in Italy, similarly to Greece and other countries, we saw protesters worried for their conditions.
Indeed life is becoming harder for a lot of people, but what puzzles me is the perceptions we have of this change.
In an Italian TV show, I saw a group of protesters, mainly farmers from Sicily, who were crying as they could see no hope for themselves and their families.
It was really moving and shocking to see a man in his sixties explaining he was poor.
The feeling was that he was ashamed of being in that condition and there something started to get confused in my head.

One thing is feeling your stomach empty, another thing is  to feel ashamed.
Now, don't get me wrong I believe both two things are terrible, however we cannot deal with them the same way.

Our society created ambitions, that were needed to fuel the economy.
We generally believed that everybody deserved to improve his life conditions, which I kind of agree with.
The point we never asked ourselves is : given we deserve it, do we need it? And if so, how?

Did we ever ask ourselves this question?
We always tried to reach the "level" of our friends in a kind of competition that generated needs we never really had.

The Sicilian farmer exploded in anger and used it to shout to the camera that was closing on his watering eyes : "We eat meat only once a week!!".
Everybody could feel sadness growing after this revelation, I admit the feeling was quite strong.

But...wait... that's quite healthy. As a matter of fact it is normally a good idea to eat meat once a week, it is not malnutrition.
I don't want to minimize the tragedy of this man and his family, what I want to say is that he felt poor BECAUSE -according to him- he could eat meat only once a week.

This is deeply wrong and I believe it was produced by wrong expectations that were "planted" on our society, to fuel the economy.

Don't you have the feeling that an economy that needs this kind of tricks to "work" is fundamentally wrong, deep in its roots?
It cannot work, and it did not work, now we see that.

"Richness" (Resources) became more and more concentrated and if you live in an area (or "social neighborhood") where this concentration has been happening, then you may believe that we all improved our conditions, as you (we) don't care to check what happened elsewhere.

Now this concentration managed to gather almost all the available resources from the "outer world", and it's collecting them in your neighborhood.
The funny part is that they used you to do it, they made you believe you absolutely had to eat meat every day (plus medicines and treatments to save yourself from that), that you needed a new tv set every other year.. they made you need things.

Are we poor?
Someone badly needs us to feel this way, to feel that if we can buy a new car then we are not poor anymore.

Maybe it's time to think the economy in another way, this one never worked for the benefit of the masses.