Category: Capitalism

Costs of our Life Styles

What we may not realize here in the US is that a lot of consumer products, and some of the services that we use, can be remarkably inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. In some cases it is hard to imagine how a product can even be made available to sell at the particular cost point to our benefit.  Some of our mass-produced food and clothing come to mind in this regard.   Economists will probably tell you that there are many reasons for this, and several factors that make this possible.  My point is that things are this way also because we, the public, generally wish it to be that way.  While we might feel good about the situation we are in in this regard for the moment, some of this does come at a cost, a cost that we ignore because we do not like to think about things for the longer term and in the bigger picture.  We may not realize that the situation could be a cause of issues over the long run.  Perhaps the living is really not that easy.

One of the results of our desire for cheap stuff is that we are willing to go anywhere in the world to get them.  This is probably the primary reason for the successful existence of Walmart.  I know that I myself like a good bargain and do not necessarily look for where the product came from. Cheap consumer products are brought in from some place abroad – where they can be produced less expensively – with cheaper raw material, with cheaper labor, with perhaps poorer working conditions, and maybe even using environmentally exploitative methods. In some cases even child labor may be involved.  We also look for the least expensive way to get work done, for a cost that we would not be willing to pay ourselves if we were ourselves in the business. We  are willing to exploit other people whom we we might even consider less equal to us in some ways.  And then we can get upset with the others when there are other issues that arise.  And if there are middlemen involved who have their own axe to grind, people can get squeezed even more to support our way of life.

Most of us will go go through life without even thinking about these kinds of consequences about the things we do and accept as normal, but it is also good to read about organizations that see what is happening and try to make at least a small (may be very small!) difference in changing how society works in these contexts.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/08/13/634962251/ben-jerrys-milk-with-dignity-pact-with-farmworkers-seems-to-be-paying-off?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

We should be supporting such organizations, and perhaps even be willing to go the additional mile in this regard in terms of possibly accepting an increased cost of living.  I believe there are organizations that focus on this kind of concept if one is serious about this.  Here is a link to one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Trade_USA

It is also not too difficult these days to get a better understanding of how your favorite store sources their products, and to respond appropriately.

 

 

Slavery In The World Today

I happened to tune to part of an episode of NPR’s Fresh Air program that caught my attention while I was driving home a few days back.  They were talking about slavery in the world today.  I was shocked for a couple of reasons.  The first was the realization that an institution that people have for a long time recognized as being abhorrent, and have condemned in the civilized world, still exists today.  In spite of all the technological and social advances in the world we have not found a way to uplift the life of so many people in all parts of the world.  In fact inequality probably exists to a far greater extent today than it ever did before. Would you believe that the statistics indicate that there are more than 20 million “slaves” in the world today?

You can also check out this older article on this topic from the Washington Post.

The second reason for my shock was the realization that a significant component of today’s slavery is due to the western world.  In our quest for cheaper goods and certain luxuries that we take for granted, we accept whatever process provides us with our  quality of lives with our eyes closed, and do not question how such a situation can come to be.  There has already been some publicity about how inexpensive clothes that are available in the west are sometimes created on the backs of exploited children in third-world countries.  But there are other aspects of our comfortable lives that are also dependent on the lives of exploited people.  I learned from the show that some of the rarer metals (cobalt , tantalum, etc.,) used in devices such as our smart phones for components like batteries and capacitors can come from slave mines in West Africa.  Folks, these are not just exploited people, they are real slaves with no freedom to live as they want.  The vendors manufacturing these products may actually not even know how exactly the raw material that goes into their products is obtained.   We, the consumers, are quite thrilled with getting a new, and very often subsidized, smartphone every other year for an inexpensive price from the service provider.  We consume so much of the product that the demand for the raw material cannot always be met by legitimate means.  There are consequences!

Think about it.  We are in the 21st century, and some of us have been fortunate to be able to live in circumstances where we do not have to worry about the basic necessities, and where we take a lot of what would be considered luxuries for granted, while at the same time there are people who are slaves who have nothing!   And if one is the cause for the continued existence of the other, humanity should be ashamed of itself.

But, surprisingly to me, I did find quite a bit of information while searching the Internet about this subject.  There is even a Wikipedia article on the topic.  There are organizations and people that are trying to bring attention to the problem.  There are people in this world with a conscience.  Here is one such link.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/daniel-hayes/2015/06/facts-about-modern-slavery/

 

The FCC and Set-top Boxes

The dramatic headline “The FCC is going to war over set-top boxes” brought back memories of the time I was dealing with regulatory issues in the world of entertainment.   I think some things will never change as long as there is big money involved and there exists the institution of lobbying.  The battle to change the existing paradigm regarding processing and delivery of entertainment content to consumer eyes from signals that are delivered to the home by the cable companies, and to a certain extent satellite TV companies, has been ongoing for years.  It is the traditional television content delivery guys trying to protect their turf against the home entertainment guys who want to expand the reach of their systems and control how the consumers interface with the cable TV guy’s signals.   If you think that the opposition to the current cable TV signal handling paradigm in the home comes from organizations that are trying to protect the consumer and have their goodwill at heart, think again.  It is companies like Google and Sony who are on the other side, with their own business interests at heart.

It is all about business and money at the end of the day.  And I have to throw up my hands and laugh at the absurdity of all of it, because all of this fuss, and the use of significant monetary resources, is about entertainment and the distraction of the population, something far removed from the more basic needs of the people at large.  While reading the article above I came upon this video from John Oliver from a long while back on the topic of Net Neutrality.  It is dated at this point but still hilarious!

There is another battle well underway in parallel in the entertainment world where the forces of business are trying to change the way entertainment actually gets into your home.  Companies like Netflix and Amazon actually deliver entertainment content via the Internet, which is of course a very non-traditional approach to doing things.  Considering that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are almost always the cable companies themselves, this leads to the development of interesting business strategies by the cable companies to try to optimize return to their shareholders, all of which is supported by suitable lobbying of the government that is hoped to result in regulatory regimes that benefit one company or the other.

For heaven’s sake, it is only entertainment!

T-Mobile’s Binge On service

I wrote a blog on the subject of Net Neutrality a while back when the FCC was in the process of putting into place rules for the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with regards to how they manage traffic from different sources within their networks.  Essentially the FCC ruled that all traffic has to be treated the same, i.e., in a fair manner. At that time I noted that this was easy enough to say, but could be difficult to implement, considering the diversity of the data and the kinds of traffic carried on the Internet.  At that time I noted that the FCC should act with a soft touch with regards to enforcement of regulation.

It turns out that we did not have to wait that long to see an implementation of traffic management in a ISP’s system that seems to violate the FCC’s rules.  But this implementation is being presented by the vendor as a feature that benefits the customer.   Witness T-mobile’s Binge On service.

The data service paradigm for most mobile service providers in the US is that you pay the vendor based on the amount of data that you use, or wish to use (if you sign up for monthly quotas).   So anything that reduces the component of the data that you receive that actually counts towards measurement of your usage should be considered a positive for the customer according to T-Mobile.  (Of course, this assumes that the customer has signed up for receiving an amount of data that really matches what he or she needs.)

But what has happened in the recent past is that the mainstream service providers have been trying to force customers into service packages that include a lot more data than they need, with the hope that they get hooked onto new services that will chew up this additional bandwidth resource.  This is what happens when folks start streaming video services on mobile networks.  As usage increases and begins to match what the customer has actually subscribed for, he or she will become more inclined to pay for additional data services on the network.  (This will also serve as justification for the mobile service providers to lobby to buy up more of the nation’s bandwidth resources for their own networks.)

Enter T-mobile.  They say that they will not count the amount of data that a customer who has signed up for Binge On receives for certain video streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, etc..)  against the customer’s data usage limits.  It sounds good, but what they are also doing is controlling the amount of the data in those video streams for people who are signed up.  They are in fact lowering the quality of the video being delivered, i.e., they are treating these video streams differently from how they would treat them normally in their networks.

You might say that this is OK since the customer knows that this happening.   It turns out that the customer really may not know what is going on.  It seems like this service is being offered today as an “opt out” service, i.e., unless you mention anything, you are signed up for it.  Also, it has been observed today that the customer’s video services are throttled even for video service providers that have not signed up with T-mobile for supporting the service.  It is not clear if the customer still pays for the data being received in such circumstances.

What is happening is exactly along the lines of my expectations.  Due to the nature of the Internet today, there are bound to be scenarios that develop to do not meet the notion of net neutrality in a simplistic fashion.  The FCC will have to adapt, and as it does, the set of detailed regulations that need to be considered will tend to change and continue to expand.

When people complain about government and bureaucracy, it is useful to remember that most of this happens a result of people and organizations creating situations where they try to manipulate the system to their own benefit, where simplistic approaches for enforcement will no longer work.  Very often this is done in the pursuit of big money, not necessarily the betterment of man.  After all, who will argue that entertainment, which is the application for most of the streaming video that tends to dominate the bandwidth usage of the Internet today, is most essential for our living, and should dominate the use of our resources.

Its a crazy world we live in!

 

 

Are there any Boundaries for Greed

People like the person noted in the article below are greedy parasites who seem to thrive on the misery of others.  They can come up with all kinds of reasons to justify the things they are doing, and also make all the excuses they want in this regard, but in reality all they seem to care about is making money for themselves even at the expense of others.  This is unfortunately the result of capitalism run amok, without a conscience.  It is folks like this who cause new rules and regulations to come into place regarding the the conduct of business that they can later cry about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html

The publicity behind this story may have changed the final outcome a little.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/big-price-increase-for-tb-drug-is-rescinded.html?_r=0