Corporate concubine...

Its one thing to be a corporate whore.

Sure, I oppose to whoring one's self out to a corp (FYI, as opposed to wage slavery, corporate whoring implies a servile, ass-kissing sort of debasement), but there is something worse.

I call it being a corporate concubine. That's when you are force to work for (i.e. "blow") a corporation/for-profit institution for free.

Like in one of the classes I'm taking right now.

5 groups of graduate students are all working on creating a sustainability plan for Landsvirkjun (the private/public corporation responsible for almost all dams and power plants in Iceland), meeting with officials of the company and then trying to sell them our ideas, which they will get copies of, for free.

They aren't paying us. They can use our ideas at will. And if we refuse to take part, we may fail the class.

In other words, we are giving valuable time, effort, and product to a for profit organization in order to receive a numerical estimate of our abilities, based on the judgement of someone who sees nothing wrong with such an arrangement.

How much does that suck?

The paper I turned in...

Samuel Levesque
Position Paper 1: Taking Sides

On the issue of whether or not sustainable development is compatible with human welfare my answer is a resounding “yes”, though not for any of the reasons put forward by Dinah M. Payne, Cecily A. Raiborn, or Ronald Bailey. While the authors question if sustainable development is compatible with human welfare, they fail to ask if industrialized capitalist corporatism is compatible with sustainable development.
Both articles are based on the premise that Globalist corporate capitalism and the so-called free market are inevitable, unchangeable, and therefore a given. While Bailey argues that continuing the current course of development will result in the system curing the very ills it produces, Raiborn and Payne argue that while the system produces ills, it can be reformed from within and without into a higher-minded force for ecological and social good. In essence Raiborn and Payne argue for the physician to heal himself, where as Bailey argues that smoking cures cancer.

It is my contention that any system in which a relative few control the vast majority of available resources in order to further profit those who own shares of said resources will never lead to a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically prosperous future for the vast majority of humanity. Instead the continued accumulation of resources necessary for life (land/soil, water, food, etc) into the hands of a select elite will result in a continuance of manufactured scarcity (which drives up profits) and manufactured needs (which increase consumption and drive up pollution) with all the human and ecological degradation that such a system entails, no matter how sustainable the practices of individual institutions become.
Far from accepting the argument that industrialism, let alone capitalist industrialism is a boon to mankind, and that somehow if left unchecked will correct the very problems it causes, I contend that by their very structures industrialism and capitalism (in particular corporatism) are themselves detrimental to human welfare and therefore have no real role in sustainable development.

In my view what is needed is not a tweak to the existing system, but a fundamental shift in how humanity supplies its basic needs, with an aim to meet those needs (as well as most of our less destructive wants) while repairing or restoring as much ecological vitality as possible. This happy situation can be realized not by simply changing the goods mass produced and the technical processes that produce them, but by changing the very nature of production. As E.F. Schumacher once put it, want is needed is not more mass production, but more “production by the masses”.

Small-scale, decentralized local production of the sort championed by Schumacher, Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sales, and even Gandhi is far more likely to be ecologically sound (as it does not “export” its pollution over the horizon), egalitarian (see Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred), and adaptable than massive corporate structures, not to mention more profitable to those involved (if one counts profit as production for one’s own use) as there are no capitalist middlemen harvesting the fruits of other’s labor. The kind of top-down profit-driven “development” championed by the authors of both articles will only lead to continued ecological damage, just as top-down ideologically driven “reform” could very well lead to the sort inequality and enforced poverty that Bailey fears. Global sustainability must begin small-scale, decentralized, and free of hierarchal institutions to be adaptable to local ecosystems, populations, and economies.

Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Harper and Row, New York. 1975.

Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survial of the Indian Nations. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco. 1991

Sales, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: Lessons for the Computer Age. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge. 1995.

“Gandhian Economics” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhian_economics

The paper I wanted to write...

>Samuel Levesque

Position Paper 1: Taking Sides

On the issue of whether or not sustainable development is compatible with human welfare my answer is a resounding “yes”, though not for any of the reasons put forward by Dinah M. Payne, Cecily A. Raiborn, or Ronald Baily. While the authors question if sustainable development is compatible with human welfare, they fail to ask if industrialized capitalist corporatism is compatible with sustainable development.

Both articles are based on the premise that Globalist corporate capitalism and the so-called free market are inevitable, unchangeable, and therefore a given. While Baily argues that continuing the current course of development will result in the system curing the very ills it produces, Raiborn and Payne argue that while the system produces ills, it can be reformed from within and without into a higher-minded force for ecological and social good. In essence Raiborn and Payne argue for the physician to heal himself, where as Baily argues that smoking cures cancer.

It is my contention that any system in which a relative few control the vast majority of available resources in order to further profit those who own shares of said resources will never lead to a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically prosperous future for the vast majority of humanity. Instead the continued accumulation of resources necessary for life (land/soil, water, food, etc) into the hands of a select elite will result in a continuance of manufactured scarcity (which drives up profits) and manufactured needs (which increase consumption and drive up pollution) with all the human and ecological degradation that such a system entails, no matter how sustainable the practices of individual institutions become.

From my point of view, the authors of both works are simply engaged in greenwashing a toxic rainbow of capitalist dogma. Capitalism, at least in its current corporate form, works on laws that stand in stark contrast to those of sustainability, requiring infinite “growth” within the confines of a finite planet, requiring profitability no matter what the ecological cost, and concentrating wealth and power into tiny pockets, leaving a vacuum of the sort nature abhors everywhere else. Payne and Raiborn try to skirt this issue with a bit of semantics, using the word “business” when most often they mean “corporation”, the difference being that a business owned by a single individual, small cadre of partners, or cooperative members can legally take actions that are unprofitable if they feel the ethical need to do so, a corporation answers to its shareholders, who are legion, and is required by law to make decisions based not on the general good, but on how to maximize profits for their shareholders. If that can be achieved with sustainable practices, fine. However, if an ecologically unsound but more profitable option opens up, they are required by the rules of the market to take advantage of it.

Under capitalism “human welfare” is defined primarily in monetary values, and we humans are factored in as just another resource. True sustainability would (within the limits of human ability) strive to ensure that an empowered, prosperous humanity lives within its means as part of the nature world. Any system founded on the idea that some should gorge while others starve, that a distant elite should have the “right” to dictate local livelihoods based on their supposed ownership of local resources, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats” (which ignores the fact that it drowns all the boat less) cannot achieve the sort of sustainability that I feel is necessary for a just and fulfilling existence.

To be or not to be...

...that is the question.

Whether it is nobler in Iceland to suffer the slings and arrows of second-class membership or apply for citizenship, and by so opposing, end it.

Ok, ok. Enough with the Bard.

Thing is, I want to be eligible for student loans, but as I am a non-E.U. permanent resident, I'm not.

Period.

End of story.

It doesn't matter that I'm a graduate of HÍ.
Doesn't matter if I've paid at least 10 years of taxes into the fund.
I'm a second class non-E.U. resident, so I can just fuck off.

Now, I'm eligible for Icelandic citizenship. This is no way means I'd get it if I applied. In all likelihood (judging from the tales other immigrants have told me) I'd have to apply several times, at 10,000ISK a pop, with all the bureaucratic BS it entails. Not to mention the possibility of the Office of Foreigner Surveillance (recently renamed Office of Foreigners, nor 'immigrants' mind you, 'foreigners) would suddenly discover some flaw in my residency and send me packing. After all, I'm stealing jobs from Icelanders.

If I was from an E.U. country, applying for student loans (not to mention housing assistance, disability insurance, unemployment payments, and a host of other services I help pay for but cannot apply for) would be no problem.

The hypocrisy of it really galls.

I mean, it effectively amounts to the State and all institutions thereof actively discriminating against me and others like me based on national origin, something they claim to be against. After all the 7 article of the Icelandic constitution bans discrimination based on national origin. (allir skulu vera jafnir fyrir lögum og njóta mannréttinda án tillits til kynferðis, trúarbragða, skoðana, þjóðernisuppruna, kynþáttar, litarháttar, efnahags, ætternis og stöðu að öðru leyti“).

Then there's the question of my U.S. citizenship. I may not be a big fan of the U.S. government but I do want to be able to go home at a moment's notice if my family needs my help, and while one is not required to give up their US citizenship if they gain citizenship in another country, they make it hard to keep, revoking one's citizenship if they can show "intent" on one's part to do so.

Meaning that if you've ever talked about it, written about it, or made less than "loyal" statements, poof, no more citizenship for you.

Add to this the fact that I am at heart against the very existence of the nation state, it bugs me to think of groveling for the supposed "right" to be essentially made the property of an institution that I have no real say in.

So its rock or hard place for me.

Damn

Jú sé jú vant e kónstitúsjón?

During the pot-and-pans pandemonium this last winter I for one wasn't protesting for new elections.

I was protesting, at my most stupidly optimistic, for an honest-to-goodness-wipe-the-slate-clean-declare-year-zero revolfuckinglution.

However, I was willing to settle for constitutional reform.

Remember that?

Remember the idea that it had become high-time to rewrite the overly long, overly complex, and totally unworkable Icelandic constitution?

Somewhere along the line, the whole idea just disappeared.

Poof!

No more constitutional reform.

Looking back at it, I remember a plethora of articles pointing out just how expensive it would be.

After all, highly paid experts would have to be fed (on food worthy of such worthies) and housed (in houses worthy of such worthies) for months at a time in Reykjavík (you can't expect anything of this magnitude to happen anywhere else, það er bara svo lómó út í sveit...) each with a cadre of highly paid assistants...and after all, the country was broke and so of course we can't afford it and blah blah blah.

Now, thinking about it, this was a very slick bit of PR. By convincing people that a new constitution was too expensive, the powers that were and the powers that were to be managed to torpedo one of the most popular and radical demands that all us skríl were out pounding our pots for.

But the argument that we couldn't afford a new constitution because its too expensive is based on the same sort of 2007/old school political thinking that got us into this mess to begin with. I mean, come on! The delegates can't keep in touch via teleconference? It's not like it's a good thing that they should all be huddled together in Rvk, far away from the people they are supposed to be representing. And who the fuck says they should be paid??? If you pay the delegates a buttload of money to write a new constitution you'll wind up with the longest, most convoluted constitution of all time because the so-called experts will be sure to keep writing and debating for as long as they keep getting paid.

Why would we even want a constitution written by a bunch of tie-wearing stuffed shirts sitting around their tax-payer provided luxury homes debating issues of rights and justice over snifters of tax funded brandy and tables of tax funded catering?

I say we make good use of the internets, and call for a citizens constitution, a document that anyone residing in Iceland can have a say in one and one that must be ratified by the people by national vote.

It would take a long time, the debates would be many, the arguments heated, but it wouldn't cost a dime and in the end, when we work out a set of simple ground rules that we can all agree on, we implement them.

Regardless of what that bunch of self-serving incompetents and ideologues in Alþingi say.

Think of it as the political version of citizen arrest.

I mean, seriously, what have we got to loose?

Boring, busy, and long

Seems to me that much economic thinking is buggered and blinded by prevailing myths about what life was like before the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. Which is why articles like this, drawing heavily from Sahlin's brilliant Stone Age Economics should be required reading.

An increasing consensus among anthropologists that hunter-gathers did not live lives that were "nasty, brutal, and short", in fact they tended to live lives of relative plenty, prosperity, and leisure.

We modern, industrialized consumer types, buried under a landslide of labor and stifled by a false sense of scarcity are in many ways far worse off, living lives that are busy, boring, and long.

One would think that with the increase in human knowledge over the course of history we could find a happy medium, but even amongst those that are working on major societal changes (sustainability, social justice, labor rights, etc) seem unable or unwilling to stare the truth in the face, namely that for nearly every wonder "progress" has wrought, said wonder has birthed a legion of evils.

This is not to say that I advocate the sort of return-to-Eden primitivism that certain lefty-greens seem enamored of (especially a lot of "deep" ecologists). What I advocate is the movement towards a society that enjoys the benefits of Sahlin's stone age economy along with the liberating (as opposed to enslaving, but that's another blog) technologies developed over the last few centuries.

Thinking that industrialized capitalism is going to solve the problems caused by industrialized capitalism is like thinking that tobacco cures cancer.

Sugar do do do do dudu ahhhh honey honey....

So the government passes a "sugar tax". The idea is simple: Increase government revenue, decrease the over consumption of unhealthy and empty calories, and make healthy foods more competitive vis a vis the consumer's wallet.

The result is predictable: The tax winds up applying to only some sugar-filled products but not to others (super sugary yogurt and skyr drinks for instance) and somehow winds up applying to sugar-free products like chewing gum. The over all effect is to raise food prices and increase inflation to the point where the increase in state revenues equals out to nil.

Icelandic lawmakers remind me of a chef who never washes his pots and then wonders why his creme brulee tastes like steak...