On Money

They say money changes you and I started to wonder why that is. What is it about money that inherently changes the way people behave. It can drive someone to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill to get it. What is it about money that causes that level of reaction, or overreaction? Why do we want money so badly? Is it because of the things we believe it can get for us? Maybe that's all it really comes down to. Money is just a concept we use. It's our way to keeping track of just how much of what you want you can have. I guess in that regard then money can equal freedom, at least in our society's terms of what freedom is. Currently our society is a capitalistic one, where one's success is rewarded with money. We tend to associate money with power because money gets you what you want. Just look at the Hollywood movie producer, who is a multi-millionaire, that controls the lives of not on the movies they produce, but also the lives of the people involved in them. They wield a ridiculous amount of power, and not just within their own little world. That is thanks to not only their own wealth, but also their ability to make money for others. Money can influence even political power. Look at our own elections. In order to be even nominated you have to generate a huge amount of money. This is just to be seen. Then if you're elected, you have to start bringing in even more money for your eventual reelection. In addition to normal skills like being able to lead, understand the law, and navigate the world of professional politics, one has to be a fundraiser as well. Does that mean money is the root of all evil or just a necessary one?
Not all that long ago it used to be that we would barter for our goods and services. You want that sack of flour then you'll need to work on my roof for a few hours. Time and energy were exchanged for equal (hopefully) time and energy. Somewhere along the way that changed. Instead of a direct exchange of services, we now tend to hand over whatever currency is accepted in exchange for something. So now if you want that bag of flour you're not going to be talking to the guy who milled it. Instead you're talking to the supermarket chain that worked out a deal with said guy or group of guys to pay them a specific amount of money for their product in exchange for the ability to take that bag of flour out beyond the reach of what the guy could have hoped to done on his own. I'm not saying this setup is bad because I don't know any guys who mill flour, which means if I want it then my options are kind of limited. No, the problem really comes from other situations where we're exchanging our time and energy for something other than equal time and energy. I have agreed to work 40 hours in a week so that you'll pay me an agreed upon of money that I can then turn around and spend on whatever I want, which is usually bills. The basic assumption is that the money you're giving me is going to have value equal to the time I invested in getting it. When you think about it though, does the money ever really match up in value to the time it took to get it? And it makes me wonder as well are we devaluing ourselves in the process? It can be rare to see your time and energy get turned into something tangible rather than some numbers put into your bank account where the other numbers live.

How is it that a majority of the world's wealth is kept by a very small minority of people? It's seemingly always been that way too be it monarchies, business owners, or extraordinary individuals who did something special. I can't fault someone for wanting to maintain their level of wealth. Very rarely do people want to go backwards in what they have. So we ask ourselves how does that billionaire justify making another fifty million dollars when they already have more than enough. Couldn't some resident in a third world nation ask that of a middle class family who is living on the combined salaries that is less than eighty thousand dollars a year, which could be exponentially greater than anything they could hope to make in their own lifetime? The family that's living on eighty thousand dollars may be very comfortable. They'll have bills and complications like everyone else, including the billionaire. Sure the billionaire is able to fly to Monaco to race a car made of diamonds against a solid gold robot he had commissioned, but some way or another he has to pay for all that, even if his reserves are much greater than the average person. The middle class family is able to keep their fridge stocked with food, their kids in new clothes, and has access to just about any medicine they would need for non-emergencies.
I'm not saying that billionaires should give their money away. I'm not mad or jealous of them for having that money. I'm just curious what they did to get it and in such high amounts. As with many things I'm sure a lot of circumstances had to come into play. They say it's easy to make money if you already have plenty to start with, which is why a lot of people will assume that if someone comes from a wealthy family then it is assumed they'll always be rich as long as nothing catastrophic happens. Is that really successful though? If you start out with a million dollars to your name and you turn that into a billion aren't you just doing what most other people are doing? Someone who starts with a thousand dollars is likely to turn that into something greater than a thousand dollars. So what are these people with money doing with their wealth? Sure some of them may be sitting on it because like Scrooge McDuck believes, the ownership of money is its own reward. Others though are spending that money. When money is spent is has to be going somewhere. Does it all just sort of circulate back to the original owner in those cases? I guess my question is how is it there are trillions of dollars moving around through the economy and yet for the most part everyone's portion of it stays roughly the same throughout their life?
Is the accumulation of wealth all just arbitrary? If tomorrow your bank account said zero then the world around you would immediately decide you have zero worth, at least until you sort out the problem, assuming you could sort out the problem. That doesn't address the larger issue though, which is that our very money, regardless of how much you have in the bank, under the mattress, or invested in offshore accounts has a value that we all have to agree upon. Currently our money isn't backed by gold like it used to be. It's backed by something else now and it's an elaborate game to keep convincing everyone we know that it's still worth the value printed on it. I don't think that tomorrow our money is suddenly going to become worthless. I doubt even that our personal value of money is going to change all that much. I do wonder though about recent situations where it's becoming painfully clear that our money isn't exactly safe and those who are supposed to be in charge of it seem to be more interested in maintaining their own levels than performing the services they were expected to do for their customers. I find it hard to believe that other countries have their economies crumble and even collapse while our own country soldiers on. Sure we have recessions and depressions. One has to wonder though does each time that happen does it make our dollar just a little bit weaker? Will it eventually get to the point where we all ask ourselves why we're using this piece of paper, which is a note saying we have some numbers in a bank, is so important to how we live? If and when that happens will we turn our attention back to something more tangible in value?

On the Quantity of Life

The other day I was out eating fast food and I started to think about the sheer numbers that are involved when we consume. I was thinking about how many potatoes have to be grown so that a place like McDonald's has enough to supply fries at all their locations for just a single day. That's just one food chain. There are hundreds of other companies that use potatoes in the same way. Think of all the chickens that have to be slaughtered so that we have that delicious meat whenever we want it. It's almost hard to imagine just how much we're talking about because we've gotten to a point where if you want something all you have to do is go get it. Food is a phone call away. The thing is though that it's not just food that we devour in large quantities. Try and count the number of trees that must be cut down each day so that we can have buildings and furniture. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't use them because let's face it, we're on this planet and have as much right as any other species to make our way through the world. There are over 6.5 billion people on this planet, with over 300 million in the US alone. It's staggering the resources that we have to go through on any given day.

Our nation has been fairly fortunate throughout its history that we don't have a lot of experience with a lack of resources. Sure there were times when people were out of work or food wasn't as plentiful as it was in the past, but our continent has an abundance of natural resources and so far we've been able to recover given enough time. Looking back to the 1930s we could see what things could be like if something broke down. The dust bowl was something that happened over a relatively small period of time in a relatively small area. Sure it was almost a decade and a hundred million acres of land, but considering the size of this nation, it actually was somewhat small in scope. Still that "small" patch of land had a ripple effect on the surrounding areas for decades after the initial problem. Even with that time where many were fighting for their survival, there were many who were more than fine. And the same is true today, sometimes even more so. How can it be that our nation is faced with a rising crisis of obesity and yet there are people who go without? It's strange that we can have people essentially dying from having to much while down the road we have people dying from not having enough.

It's very likely that no matter where you live, there are those that are homeless. Your interaction with them may be limited and in some cases you may not even know they exist. Most of us go along with our own lives and pass right on by them without a second thought. It's almost become expected that somewhere someone is going to be without. I've often wondered what the circumstances were that caused various people to live on the fringes of society. While they may get help from shelters or other organizations, there is the question of if they can ever fully recover and rejoin "civilized" society.

First off, our society is built in a way that's very precarious. It wouldn't take much for things to topple over in a way that could be nearly impossible to recover from. Three missed meals is usually enough to break down any semblance of order pretty quickly. If the lights went out or the food stopped moving it wouldn't take very long for society as we know it to drastically shift its nature. Everything we have can easily be taken away from us. Hopefully though it's not something that we're forced to experience and because we've lived in a relatively good period it's easy to take a lot of things for granted. Sure the economy isn't great, but it's nothing compared to what this country faced in the Great Depression or what other countries experience every day. Now don't get me wrong, some people have had it much worse in recent years and for them the recession we're in may as well be called a depression because as far as they're concerned it is. Still, as a whole, the country is in recovery and there seems to be a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I think in a lot of cases there are two main schools of thought for situations like this. Either things will get better after time because they always have in the past. The other is that even if things get better in the short term, we're due for a lasting era of depression. It's only a matter of time. I guess I can see both ideas having merit because most things are cyclical given a long enough timeline.

For the individual though it may only take something in the short term to shatter their hold on society. A lost job, an illness, a death, or significant loss of money are all things that can cause people to enter into a downward spiral from which they can't recover. If you're really fortunate you have a network of friends and family that can help support you in the event that something drastic and life-altering comes along. Some people either have no one or choose not to use them and end up in a free fall. For them their resource options are gone and they experience what it is to really have to survive. In a strange way I think that's why post-apocalyptic stories are so popular. It presents us with a time where things aren't certain. Most people are able to know where their next meal is coming from. There are any number of things we take for granted that will be there. Those stories show us a potential future where life returns to how it may have been a long time ago when something as simple as finding a drink of water was something to be concerned with.

There is an assumption that everything will last for as long as we need it. It could be that there will be a time when things simply run out. Will we be prepared for something like that happening? I find myself thinking about how things we believe to be important would become frivolous in that situation. I love movies and video games, but those are products of a wealthy society. Celebrities are showered with attention and money because we choose to pay attention to them. We decide to pay ticket prices for sporting events, driving up the salaries of the athletes. It's a strange world we live in where someone who puts on makeup and plays make-believe or hits a ball with a stick is paid in six figure salaries, while those who are responsible for teaching our children are sometimes forced to take a second job just so they can pay for food in the summer. In a way it's a sign of how well our society is doing. There wouldn't be a lot of need for a movie producer or football player in a society that could barely feed itself.

Although it brings up the question of if our society is doing so well then shouldn't we be on the cusp of something greater? How long can we plod along watching television and spending our money on shiny new toys before we start looking at moving beyond the material world? Now I know these things come in small increments, but it feels like we're due for advances beyond that of how to bring 3D to our living rooms. Everything in this world uses something else for fuel. Basically everything uses something else in order to take that next step forward. It's just how things have to be. What would life be like though if we didn't need to eat? What if there was some way to break out of the old consumption paradigm in such a way that we would be free of it forever? What could we accomplish if we weren't held down by something as simple as what we're going to eat next? Maybe the next step in evolution and technology could answer those questions and the limits that are in front of us would disappear.

On Quality

There is a saying "If you're going to do something. Do it right", which can be immediately countered with "Never do your best work because they will come to expect it." Quality is an interesting concept. Not everything in the world can be great. In fact it seems as though there are a great many things that only serve as a measure of how good something else is. I was thinking about Fruit Stripe gum the other day and it got me wondering about the whole idea. Did the makers of that cheap gum simply not care that their product was substandard? Maybe they thought it was good enough and stopped at that. I guess either answer just shows that people have different standards on even the smallest things.

The thing is that no one always does their best work all the time. It's an impossible standard to maintain. Sure there will be times when you get it your all and really try to make sure that there is a special quality to whatever you've put your mind to. They say the character of a person is measured by what they do when no one is looking. I believe that most people out there are generally good and if not good then simply not looking to be overtly bad. With that said most of the time though people will do what they think they can get away with. Driving down the road we know what the speed limit is and yet we go over. We do this and justify it in our mind because don't the cops have better things to do than chase us down for going 5-10 mph over the limit? We continue this behavior because we know that most of the time we can get away with it. That's why a car pulled over by a cop car with flashing lights is the strongest deterrent to prevent speeding. That little warning that if you're not careful then maybe it'll be you on the side of the road while people drive by staring at your embarrassment. The effort we put into things tends to be very similar. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone out there is doing just the bare minimum, but let's be honest, if everyone put forth their best effort all the time this world may be a very different place.

What's strange about quality is that it's not always the best thing that's the most successful. Look at McDonald's or Starbucks or Coca Cola. Their products aren't superior to what's around them. They just happen to be very successful in being in the top of their class. One could argue about taste for those various companies, but a McDonald's hamburger isn't known for its great quality. While you may enjoy Starbucks coffee, there are several alternatives out there that could be labeled as "better" in price or overall taste. Somehow those companies have taken average products and skipped past quality and gone straight for quantity. They have saturated the market with whatever they're selling in hopes that no one else stands against them. There is a problem with that though. Without competition there is no need to become better. If everyone is already buying your hamburgers or sodas then why change anything for the better? Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only true form of competition comes from those who simply attempt to match the marketing blitz because that's what we as a society have shown we respond to. So it's hard to blame the large companies for glossing over their quality when we've shown that we don't really care one way or another. Sure we say that we what better quality, but the line to the drive-thru is always crowded.

Now I know that with today's modern family it's getting harder to simply take time for really anything. The world always feels like it's blasting forward and if you're not running at top speed you're not just going to get left behind, but you're going to get run over in the process. Mom and dad are both working and by the time they get home from a day in the world there may be very little energy left to do something like cook a full meal for the family. Instead it just becomes easier to pick up our phone and dial for someone to bring us something. Or we stop by that drive-thru on the way home because it's there. We don't always have time or the energy to be concerned with the quality of something. Sometimes we just have to take what's easiest and move on. It would be easy to judge someone when they do this, but we've all been there. We know that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path. There are more and more moments in life where we put away our standards because standing up for them just seems too exhausting.

Maybe part of the whole issue comes from the fact that we as a society have put so much emphasis on everything that eventually something is going to fall through the cracks. There comes a breaking point where we ourselves stop trying as hard as we used to. It could be that the world smacked us around or maybe it simply stopped recognizing the fact that we put forth extra effort. When we look around and see that putting in 100% will get you the same reward as someone who only put in 70% it gets to be disheartening and given enough time one will eventually throttle back. Then that 70% becomes the new standard until it too drops down from overwhelming apathy. So it becomes understandable for those large companies who are successful at putting out a massive amount of low quality goods. They wouldn't keep making money if our own standards were raised. I guess the question is though how do we raise our standards when sometimes it feels like success is measured by the fact that you simply survived to the weekend?

On Food

We are what we eat and yet most people probably couldn't tell you exactly what they're eating on a regular basis. Sure it may taste like chicken, but is it really chicken? Today's food is a mystery of ingredients, most of which can't be pronounced without a decoder ring. Lately there has been a big push for organic food. I think part of that is because it's trendy, but also because obesity has become the leading killer in America. That's something our founding fathers probably never would have imagined happening. People are living so well that they are literally eating themselves to death. Granted the food we put in our mouths would probably not be recognizable to people back then. Even today's white bread would most likely be thought of as cake as far as nutritional value is concerned. Our society is so specialized that many of us could go through our entire lives without ever producing our own food. We will have allowed someone else to provide us everything we eat.

There have been several well-made documentaries regarding the food and food industry today. All of them have a message that they're trying to get across so you may have to take what they're saying with a grain of salt. One examined how we as a country are eating more corn than ever before. Most people probably haven't thought about it until it's pointed out to them. Corn is in almost everything we eat today. Farmers who grow it are experiencing a strange time where the crops they grow can't be used directly as food. Try eating corn straight from the stalk. Unless it was grown specifically for eating, it's probably going to taste like sawdust. It's not until that corn is processed that it can actually be used for anything. That's how it is with most things these days. Processing because this term that gets used that summarizes all sorts of things. By the time they get done processing it, it tastes fantastic, but it may not resemble the original except on the surface. We live in a world where a private company has a patent on food itself. Monsanto has genetically altered soybeans in such a way that if farmers want to grow soy as their primary crop then they have to get their seeds from them. Part of me wonders if that's only the start. We have name brand food providers. McDonald's the probably one of the most recognizable of these. Imagine if they figured out a way to genetically alter cows in such a way that they would produce more beef. Or even flavored beef. Like Monsanto they could control the very supply at its source. It could only be a matter of time before companies start looking at ways to increase their hold on the particular market. Companies are working at owning food at its source. Will they eventually try to patent flavors?

Going back to what we eat, growing up it always seemed like the stuff that was good for you tasted the worst. It's been shown that food flavors have more intensity when we're young so it's very likely that food tastes different to children than it does to adults. Sure an apple is going to taste like an apple, but only more so for a kid, who hasn't experienced all the various flavors the world has to offer. As we get older the taste buds get used to everything and flavors get a bit more muted. That could explain why we tend to remember things tasting better when we were young. For us they probably did have more taste. Plus our tastes change as we grow. I used to despise mushrooms as a kid, but now I can't get enough of them. I couldn't tell you the precise moment when that happened, but it did. I'm sure if I think about it there are foods that I loved as a kid which I can't stomach anymore. As I've mentioned before our bodies become something new as time goes on. Every cell is eventually replaced so after a time we're literally someone new. That could account for why we lose a taste for certain things after awhile. Then again certain things will remain constant. Liver & onions can go straight to hell and I don't care if Bobby Flay were preparing them, it wouldn't be something I'd want to put in my mouth.

Now I'm not a picky eater. Most usually stance is that I want whatever will not make me hungry anymore. At the same time, there are moments where I need a flavor. I normally can't identify exactly what I want. I just know that I want something. Have you ever had a taste for something so specific that nothing else will do? I get that all the time and usually end up settling for whatever is closest to me. It's strange that as children food flavor was more intense naturally and now companies are working at intensifying food to match. Food has become much more than just sustenance. Who knows what it will become next.

On Money

Have you watched television lately? Or really ever. In an hour's worth of programming there is only really forty two minutes dedicated to the actual show. The other eighteen minutes is filled with advertising, both national and local. Back in the 1960s there were nearly ten more minutes of programming for an hour long show. In today's half hour block of time over 25% of it is devoted to commercials. Somewhere along the way it became acceptable to increase the advertising block of time in hopes of generating more money. Add to that there is something called product placement where even during the show there are not too subtle inclusions of items that a company wants you to buy. So the clever doctor just happens to crack open a Coke just before revealing the diagnoses that's been plaguing the patient the entire episode or the cops chase down the killers using all Ford vehicles. The idea is that we'll associate the soda or the car with our favorite show and maybe, just maybe, we'll take that association with us when we're faced with the decision of what to drink or what to drive.

With commercials someone is constantly trying to convince you to hand over your money for a service or product that they want you to believe you can't live without. Who knows, maybe you can't live without it, but I'm usually of the belief that if I managed to get by this long without it, then it's not so much a needs as it is a desire. I've talked before about how I've stayed pretty traditional when it comes to the work I've done in order to make my money. It's hard for me to imagine having to go to work every day and spend my time trying to convince people to give me their money. Some people are born salesmen. They have a gift at identifying a person's need and knowing how to fulfill it. Or at least spotting the person's perceived need and what they can do to maximize profit from it. Regardless of how you feel about it, it must be hard work filled with uncertainty.

The more I think about it, the stranger it is this cycle we go through to make money, only to spend it on things we don't always need. If you think about it this way, whatever we spend our money on it's just the culmination of all the effort we put into making that money in the first place. In that sense it really comes down to quantifying the value of our time. Everything has worth, which means everything has a cost associated with it. As of right now we dictate the price of things, even if it often feels like we have no power over the system as a whole. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we as a whole determine the value of things based on our demand for it. Our power to sway the system may feel inconsequential because we're just one voice out of many. I recently read about how due to the current economic situation it's getting to be too expensive for Americans to eat fast food. Fast food was designed to be a relatively cheap and easy alternative to cooking. It's to the point now where it's actually more cost effective to buy the ingredients and make it yourself. Actually it's been that way for a long time, but it comes back to how much your time is worth to you. The added monetary cost was designed to offset the saving in time. The thing is that the price of fast food will not go down until people start to weigh the financial cost versus the time spent and decide the cost does not justify the benefit. For some people time will always be more important than money. For others the saving of money outweighs any extra time spent preparing a meal by hand.

Will we ever get to a point where money isn't the basis of our society? Really money is just a mutually agreed upon standard for what something is worth and yet who decides what the standard is? Someone out there is making a determination on the value of everything. Is it us that influences that decision or does the system take on a life of its own? If we really are in control then theoretically we could all mutually decide to abandon the system in favor of something else. It's highly unlikely that it would ever happen though. They say money is the root of all evil and maybe that's a little dark, but not exactly far off the mark. We associate money with power because right now if you have money then you have more opportunities than someone without it. Look at big business who are caught doing something wrong. They can use their large amounts of money to buy their way through the legal process. The same thing happens with celebrities who misbehave. Do those with money not have to follow the same set of rules as those with less? If we were to abolish currency as we know it today then how would those people with large amounts of money be able to maintain their status or level of power? We use money as a way to rank ourselves within society, even if we may do it unconsciously. It may not be the sole basis of how we group ourselves, but it's certainly an important factor.

Parents try to teach children the value of money so that they can understand how the world works. Before I went out and got a real job my dad would pay me for doing simple chores around the house. Before then it was just things I was expected to do anyway. I had reached an age where I needed to learn the cost of things. When we're young we almost come to expect certain things to be provided. Clothes and food would just sort of appear for us when we needed them. Toys and other things may happen on special occasions, but for a lot of us there was no real association with the price behind them. Go to a store with a toy section and watch the children there. They may be old enough to see the prices on things. They may even know the difference between $19.99 and $99.99. Still for them it's an abstract idea. When asked to pick which toy they want a child will just pick whatever appeals to them at the time. Until stipulations are put on the choice there is no limit to what they could have. Actually there is a limit, they just don't know it. So as I got older and started do chores for money there was a change. When going to the toy aisle and spotting something I wanted I couldn't just ask for it to be bought for me. Instead I had to calculate the cost and see if I had enough money to buy it myself. The responsibility was given to me to decide how I wanted to spend my own money. It was then that I started to grasp the concept of working for something I wanted, rather than simply having it given to me. It was also at that point that I I could see what my parents had to go through in order to provide me with the life I had. As I mentioned before, prior to then there was an expectation of maintaining the status quo.

With the way things are it's sometimes hard to know if money is how we quantify the value of everything or if money is where the real value is stored. Is money just a means to an end or is it just the end?

On Politics

Politics have never really been an interest of mine. As kid when it was that time for all those election ads to be running on television, interrupting what I was watching, I wouldn't have a passing interest in the whole process. As I got older that level of disinterest stayed pretty constant. The whole thing seemed like a lot of talk and posturing, but very little actual work being done. Obviously laws and changes were being done at some point. Someone somewhere was running the show. The thing was unless it affected my day to day, I wasn't all that interested in knowing anything about how the sausages were made. Unfortunately this nation is made up of a lot of people who still think that way. We always hear about how great democracy is and how people around the world are fighting for their right to have a voice in the system. We hear this and yet there is quite a bit of ambivalence when it comes to the whole political system.

First off, part of the indifference may come from the fact that the system seems unnecessarily complex, meant to deter people from looking too hard. Then again maybe the government really is that complex and things are as good as they are because of all the tiny details that go into making something law. Still there are bills that go into hundreds and thousands of pages. What is all that detail really for and could anyone ever claim to understand it all? It almost seems as though it's one thing piled on another because everyone wants their piece included. Eventually it becomes unmanageable or watered down to a point where it's ineffective, defeating the purpose in the first place. There are those situations where elected officials are playing a complex game of back scratching. In order to vote for one thing they have to first promise to vote a specific way on something completely different. How is that any different from saying you'll pick someone first for your kickball team as long as they share their cupcake with you at lunch?

On the flip side there seems to be a lot of fighting among the various sides that are in charge. Part of that is because there are usually two distinct sides to anything, even if there isn't. Not everything can be broken down into black and white sides and yet it feels like either you're with Democrats or Republicans. The dividing line isn't usually so apparent. There seems to be a mentality that either you're with one or you're against another. Of course if you don't pick one of the big kids' team then you're going to be classified as part of the lunatic fringe known as Green, Tea, or Independent. It seems like it would be nearly impossible to agree on a whole with everything that a party stands for. At least as a voter I've never found myself agreeing completely with any one side. Thankfully I have the luxury of not having to choose a specific side. The people who are running for election do though. I find it hard to believe that any Democrat or Republican agrees with everything on whichever side they've chosen, however, in order to have a chance at being elected they are going to have to at least pretend to agree with nearly everything. It's the only way they can get the support from their party and ultimately the vote from their party members. If that's the case then are there politicians that are going against their own beliefs for the sake of getting elected. It reminds me of when I was a kid and being told that I had to eat my vegetables if I wanted to have dessert. In order to get what I really wanted, I'd be eating some things I didn't want in my mouth.

In that avoidance of putting something bad in their mouth there is quite a bit of misdirection going on. This is done in a lot of different ways, but the most noticeable to me is when hot button issues like Social Security, abortion, or immigration suddenly become the most talked about subjects during election time. Politicians know that they can polarize the voting community by coming out for or against a specific issue. Then the story is all about that rather than one something else that may have more substance. Now I'm not saying any of those issues are unimportant, but they aren't the linchpins that they would like us to believe. Should they be addressed? Yes. They should be looked at and hopefully resolved before they become a crisis. In a lot of cases they want you to think it's already a crisis and in thinking that way there will be a bit of panic, which leads to less thinking and more reacting. If more time was spent actually making and implementing laws that make effective change rather than on railing about something that's known to get everyone upset maybe we'd get to a point where there was reasonable discussion about what the options are. Maybe that's expecting too much from people who are more concerned with winning than with doing good.

Why do both sides spend so much time fighting against each other? The things that unite them are greater than the things that divide them and yet they choose to focus on that small fraction of issue they don't agree on. When we were kids if someone agreed with you on nearly everything except who was the better G.I. Joe ninja that didn't stop you from being friends. Your similarities brought you together and it would be stupid to let one small thing drive you apart. Now I know that a character from a toy line isn't as important as what to do about Social Security, but for children it could be. Eventually there will come a time when the debate about abortion will seem trivial because there are larger, more important issues that need our attention. Right now we can't see that because for us it seems so important that we simply can't take our eyes off it. So the fight goes on and we're being told that something is important, even if it isn't important to us. How much time has been wasted on arguing an issue until it's no longer relevant?

The thing for me that is most upsetting is that in a lot of cases one side seems more interested in beating the other guy rather than coming up with solutions that could help everyone. One side could have a proposed plan to fight inflation. They bring it to the floor and it's immediately torn apart by the other side, not because they have a better plan, but because it wasn't something they came up with, therefor it can't be any good. I wonder how many bills or resolutions have failed because if it passed that would mean one side "won" while the other gets nothing. Not every idea brought forth is going to be great. In fact by the time most ideas get through the system they're anything but great. They're just survivors of the process.

The people making the laws are elected, which means we're ultimately responsible for them being there. If we don't like what they're doing it's our job to let them know. Sure not every voice is going to be the one that makes the decision, but decisions are made by those who show up. If you don't vote then you've essentially given up your right to complain. I'm not an idealist and I have no delusions that any political system will ever be perfect. I just know that any system has room for improvement.

On the Environment

Now I'm not anything close to what you'd call a tree hugger, although I have hugged a tree and I would recommend it if you ever get the chance. My point is that while I enjoy the environment I'm not one to consider it a passion to try and save it. Part of the reason for that is because I don't believe the environment can be saved. That's not a fatalistic statement either. There is a lot of arrogance on the part of people when they think that we're going to cause the end of the world. All we'll do is make it a crappy place to live. The thing to remember is that the environment is an ever changing system so complex that to this day we don't fully comprehend all the moving parts. Saying that doesn't mean we should dump our garbage in the river and just assume that the Earth will sort it out for us. I think we should do what we can to not actively destroy the world around us. At the same time it's unreasonable to think that we won't have an impact. There are over 6 billion of us on the planet, so we're very likely going to alter the landscape a bit with our passing.

For some people there is this innate need to preserve things. I'm not sure if this is for posterity or nostalgia or something else. We hang onto things from the past as reminders of where we've been and where we're possibly going. In some cases we prefer how things used to be over how they are right now and try to hold back change at all cost. If we keep things from changing and try to preserve things in a way that we think it should be, then maybe we're slowing down potential evolution of the environment itself. Not only that but we may be hindering our own evolution because we never allow ourselves to move from the past. They say that those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it and that's often times true. There is a certain beauty to things created in the past and maybe we should try to preserve them so that they're not lost to the ages. Still though, at what point do we start holding onto the past? If a car is at least twenty years old then it can be considered a classic. By that logic a used Chevy Nova is a classic car. Just because something is old doesn't mean that it's really classic. Sometimes it's just old. We want to save things for future generations, but what if they weren't meant to see things that way? What if it was just the natural progression for those old things to experience their time and then make way for something new? The dodo has been extinct since the 17th century and maybe there's a reason for that. I know that there is a huge difference between cars and a species of animals the same way that there's a difference between the ruins of The Colosseum and a national park.

One of the major catch phrases of the environmental movement today is the "carbon footprint". Really this is the amount of pollution a person, organization, or product creates. I'm glad that it's something that can be quantified because for too long people pretty much did whatever they wanted with little thought to the impact it would have on the world. Come to think about it, people have done that with more than just the environment, but that's for another time. For years chemicals were pumped into the rivers and oceans with almost no regard for the lasting effects it would have. Maybe that came from the fact that when you think about it the world is a pretty big place and the output from some leather mill seemed almost insignificant. The same was probably true for a single person who threw out a plastic bottle or newspaper because there was a time when it probably felt like there was an endless supply of both. It's only in the last few decades that people have started taking notice of the fact that maybe there is an end to what we can use before it's gone forever. Granted in some cases there is a fair amount of fear-mongering by various groups that paint the situation a little more bleak than it may actually be. I've often wondered about the motivations of people who do that. Are they so desperate for people to pay attention to the issue that they yell "fire!" in a crowded room? Or do they sincerely believe that things are that dire? I suppose either would be a horrible way to go through your daily life. Part of the problem with this sudden realization that things might be going downhill is that there is a level of near panic when it comes to trying to fix things. Now I'm well aware of the fact that the problems we face can't be things we take our sweet time with trying to resolve, but there is a difference between taking responsible action to correct past mistakes and frantically grasping at any solution presented. Right now the boat isn't sinking, but we're starting to see water come over the side. So we should act accordingly.

We also have to understand that things aren't always black and white. I remember growing up hearing about how the Amazon rain forest was being cut down at an alarming rate. When I heard that I thought the people cutting down those trees must have been idiots. Didn't they realize that they were killing the world's oxygen tank? It seemed obvious that it was a bad idea and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to actively hurt the world. Turns out in a lot of cases the people doing the harm aren't bad people out to do harm. They're just people doing what they feel they have to. People who live in and around the rain forest need to make a living just like we do. They don't always have the option to just pick and choose a career. If you had to cut down an acre of rain forest every day so that your kids could eat the only thing you'd be asking is when do you start. That doesn't make what they're doing right or wrong, it's simply the situation they're in. It's easy to get sanctimonious about what other people are doing when we're not in their shoes. People may rage about how the environment is being torn apart, but that doesn't stop them from going to Wal-Mart and buying cheap disposable goods or driving a car that gets twelves miles to the gallon. I'm no different either. I see the problems and know that I'm equally to blame.

Going back to the carbon footprint and more importantly our general impact on the world. How come I'm expected to keep track of everything I do, but a deer isn't? Sure my mental capacity might be greater than that of a deer, but we both live here. Plus there's a good chance that I've lived here longer than the deer so wouldn't I have more of a right to be here than they? Also I contribute to the world in a way that the deer can't even comprehend. They're basically giant rodents with antlers that just prance around the woods eating and shitting. So how come when I'm hiking I have to abide by the signs that say "Stay on trail" because the area is in a state of regrowth? I'm going to have less impact on the surrounding woods that the deer because I'm not going to eat some underdeveloped bush or rub up against a sick tree. Obviously all of that is a bit of a sarcastic argument because as people we are, for the most part, more capable of realizing our impact on the environment and in that fact we are able to do something about it. The deer is simply existing on instinct and little more. They can't be expected to rationalize anything. They can't even be expected to move out of the way of a fast approaching automobile without some serious indecision. In a way it's our responsibility to be aware of how our passing through can change the world.

As I mentioned before, the environment is so very complex. Attempting to understand it is overwhelming and anyone who says that they know all there is to know is lying to you. We've all heard about global warming and yet what we think we know may not be true. Based on everything scientists know there are still questions as to why things behave the way they do when we expect it to do something completely different. When we hear about this it's easy to throw our hands in the air and wonder if anything we do really has an impact. How important can we really be in a worldwide system? Again I'm not saying that we should fill the air with carbon monoxide or turn the oceans into sewers. The Earth has experienced 12 billion years of changes, all of it part of a natural progression. What's to say that we're not a part of the next environmental progression towards something else?

On the Family Business

I've always wondered what it would have been like growing up with a family business. As it was the very idea seems somewhat foreign to me. On one side my grandparents were dairy farmers and on the other it was...well I'm not exactly sure what they did, but it wasn't exactly a line of work that could be followed. Both my parents were in the military for a short time and did various jobs before settling into government-related work. So growing up I thought that a job was just something you went to do in order to earn money, which it in fact is, but the work my parents did wasn't anything that they wanted to pass down to me. Some people grow up in a family of cops or business owners. So in those situations it may seem somewhat logical that the career choice was a bit more predetermined. They say you can be anything you want when you're growing up. While that may be true for some people in some situations, for a lot of people there are limitations to what our career choices may be. Having family that already owns a chain of McDonald's would certainly help someone if they too wanted to get into the restaurant business.

I've often wondered how family businesses even get started. My entire adult career has just been a series of jobs in offices. For the most part I'm very interchangeable with the other drones who sit in a cubicle all day. It's not exactly a bad thing because apparently the modern world needs people like me, who are willing to contribute to the process, whatever that may be. Then there are others who have stepped off the path and ventured out on their own. There are some very enterprising people out there. Someone could look at a location and realize that there is a need for a vending machine. At first it may be a means to make a little additional money. If the location is good and they're contentious about stocking it, a vending machine could make you a fair amount of money. Using the proceeds from that one machine a person could potentially buy more machines and expand to a point where it becomes their primary source of income. To me it's that first step of deciding to buy a vending machine that would never occur to me. Is that because of my upbringing when it comes to jobs? Maybe partially it prevented someone like me from ever straying from the traditional sense of work.

Growing up I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Truth is I'm still not entirely sure. I know that I want and need money so I just do what seems rational to get it. It was very late in high school that I even decided where I wanted to go to college or for what major. The whole thing was almost on a whim. I knew I liked computers. I knew that I had at least some talent when it came to them and they were still considered to be fairly new in terms of everyday use. Before they were being run by guys in California who knew how to speak the incomprehensible language of the computer and had math skills that made normal people run in fear. At least that was the perception we had of computers in those days. A recruiter came to our school to talk about a technical college that would get me a Bachelor's degree in three years. A real degree too, not some fake degree you'd get from the University of Grenada. Up until that point I had carried around this idea that maybe I'd become a robotics designer, not knowing anything about the field except that it sounded cool. Having done some research it was going to be less about designing The Terminator and more about building a robot that welded a bumper onto a truck. Not the most exciting work out there. Plus the math required was intimidating. While I was good at math at the time, it wasn't exactly the kind of thing I wanted to spend my life doing. So after the recruiter's presentation I met with him to talk further about his college. Thing went very quickly from there. I suddenly had a direction and I just went with it.

While I was in school I was more or less on autopilot. I started this education path that would lead to a career field, so I was going to do what was necessary to finish it. Part of that was because I had never failed when it came to academics so failure to graduate didn't seem like an option, as cliche as that may sound. The other part came from the fact that I couldn't think of anything else to do should I not like where I was going. High school is almost like a salad bar when it comes to subject matter. They offer you a bunch of different information, but you ultimately take what you want and go with it if you're interested. I won't say high school was uninteresting, but nothing had really sparked for me. At least not until I started using computers. Really my career has been based on the fact that as a teenager I lacked the imagination to think of anything else.

There are some people who know what they want to do for a long time before they actually achieve it. A guy I went to high school with wanted to be a pilot for as long as I had known him. After we graduated he went to the academy to become a pilot. As far as I know that's what he's doing now. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of laser-like focus when it came to a career. I often wonder what kind of jobs other people do if they're not in the computer industry. In my mind there are like a dozen possible career choices, which is obviously limiting the true scope of the job world.

So what is it about certain people who decide they're not going to sit in a cube or the thought of doing so wouldn't even occur to them that makes them do the things they do? Is it easier for those people who have a family business to go into? I'm sure in many cases there are those who don't want anything to do with their father's scrap metal business or become a lawyer like their mother. Still having a predefined choice might be nice. Is your current career something your children could follow you into when they get old enough? Would you want them to? I wonder if the jobs we do today will be antiquated by the time our children are entering the workforce. What happens to the family business when there is no longer a need for that business?

On the Five Year Flaw

When I was in college Dodge had recently made a major change to their Ram pickup truck. It put them back in direct competition with Ford and Chevrolet. At the time I remember wanting one because 1) they looked cool and 2) I had heard that Dodge trucks were pretty reliable. A friend of mine said that I should wait at least another four years before getting one though. When I asked why he said that there was supposedly a five year flaw built into all the new models and in a few years that flaw would begin showing itself in the first generation of vehicles. It sounded like a great conspiracy theory regarding manufacturing, partially because it almost had a ring of truth to it. I suppose that's how conspiracies get started though by sounding like they might possibly be true. Add to that at the time there was no way to verify if it was true. You would just have to wait and see if in five years the Ram truck suddenly fell apart. Still the idea may have some merit because more and more it feels like things aren't built to last. I know in saying this I will probably come off as an old man who is nostalgic about how things worked better before. I don't know that they always worked better or lasted longer, but there seems to be a definite trend for things to have a short shelf life. Are things built today intentionally designed to fail in a relatively short amount of time?

In most cases a person will do what they think they can get away with. That may seem cynical, but look around at the world today and see if I'm making it up. There are exceptions where people go above and beyond. You may take pride in your work or whatever you do and that's good. Just because the majority of people behave as though they don't care doesn't mean you should behave the same way. Although it can be disheartening to put forth seemingly more effort than those around you and find that the reward is roughly the same regardless of quality. That could be what perpetuates the problem. So when a company is manufacturing something they'll often do the least amount of work or use the cheapest possible materials. You may have heard about government contracts being awarded to the lowest bidder. It makes sense that you don't want to spend more than necessary, but in some of those cases the bid came in lower than everyone else because the quality was significantly lower than competing bids. Think about that when you see planes flying overhead or a rocket launching.

When I was a kid VCRs were a somewhat new form of technology. As soon as the first video store opened in town we decided to buy one because it opened up a lot of possibilities when it came to entertainment. Back then we had about three or four television channels so a new option was really nice. That first VCR was a beast. It had the fake wood on the sides and weighed enough to stop airplane wheels from moving. It also didn't have any special features except that it would play VHS tapes consistently. Oh and you could fast forward and rewind. It really was a simple machine. That VCR lasted for years and probably played hundreds of tapes. As with most things it eventually started to wear out and like an old dog it just behaved like it was tired. It was time to get a replacement. By then the technology wasn't as new so prices had dropped and more brands were available. The next VCR we bought didn't last even half as long as the original. Sure it had a few new features built in, but it's primary purpose was to play VHS tapes. Before long it died. It didn't go slowly like the first VCR. The first one died of old age. The second one had a heart attack. Every VCR since that first one has only lasted a fraction of the time. Some were better than others and one could argue that maybe we got a lemon with that second one. That doesn't explain why every single one afterward didn't last as long. It's almost as though those other VCRs were the junk food equivalent.

You have to wonder if companies today find it in their best interest to create something that doesn't last. For the consumer a product that lasts forever would be great. However, for the manufacturer though it would prevent them from being able to constantly make money on selling new or replacement products. I remember thinking about how Willy Wonka wanted to make the Everlasting Gobstopper. The idea was that no matter how long you had it in your mouth, it would never dissolve, so you would have endless candy. No company would ever do that because why sell one piece of candy to someone when you can sell thousands over the course of time? My grandparents had appliances and tools that lasted for over twenty years. The idea of having to replace something every few years was unacceptable. Today something may last a couple years before it becomes obsolete or simply breaks thanks to cheap parts. Does that mean we're slowly creating a more disposable society?

The main character in Fight Club worked for a fictional automobile manufacturer and was telling someone how they determine if they should initiate a recall after an accident. "Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." It may seem very dark and cynical to think that a company would be so callous, but in the end they are running a business. We do the same thing in our own lives. We weigh the cost of the consequences compared to simply leaving it alone and decide if it's worth the trouble. Companies just do it on a larger scale. Sony could decide that it's more cost effective to use transistors that have a 30% chance to fail because based on the number of units they're going to sell, only a small portion could ever see a problem. For them there would be no need to alter that unless something exploded. Back in 2000 there was a big deal about Firestone tires essentially killing people. According to Ford only 241 tires out of a million could have a defect. If you translate that to a percentage it's so small it almost seems insignificant. That's probably what they thought too until people started dying. Experts attributed at least 250 deaths to the Firestone tires. In the year 2000 there were an estimated 41,821 deaths from automobile accidents, which means that the Firestone problem was responsible for less than .6% of those. If the media hadn't caught wind of the story it's very possible that Ford/Firestone would have kept on manufacturing the tire. Strange how the story from Fight Club became reality not too long afterward.

Lately there has been this big push for things that are "Green". Hollywood and the media have been shoving it down our throats, trying to show how in touch they are with doing the right thing. While I think the sentiment is good, it often feels like they only just discovered there was a problem or it's just another trend that will go away once it stops getting attention. Ultimately it's part of a larger issue that there is a finite amount of resources for anything and at this point in time, where we are supposedly the most technologically advanced as we've ever been, one has to wonder if it's antiquated mindsets that are misusing what we have left in order to make a quick buck. Although sometimes it's hard to fault them for doing what they feel is necessary to make a living. Still there has to be some way to balance expense with quality so that everyone gets what they want.