I have a theory that humans are inherently insecure because we have become reliant on solving problems via modifying ourselves through the use of tools and clothing. A human being without tools or clothing is therefore at a natural disadvantage and would naturally feel insecure.
Category: Society
I was walking home this evening and spotted two mattresses and a metal rack of some sort lying on the nature strip. Looking at the mattresses in particular, I couldn’t help thinking that after all the rain, they were definitely not going to be of use to anybody and would likely end up in landfill. Now, all the wood, metal and fabrics that were harvested, mined and spun before being manufactured into a bed would end up lying in a hole in the ground decomposing over hundreds or thousands of years. “What a waste!”, was my immediate thought. Then I got to thinking about extended producer responsibility (EPR) and whether or not it makes economic sense. I haven’t done a comprehensive literature review, but I believe it makes sense for the following reasons:
- It reduces negative externalities arising from landfill.
- It increases resource use efficiency.
- It fosters innovation.
- It results in better products.
My reasoning is as follows.
Companies will by nature minimise the input costs to their business. Companies will only care about the transaction of the product that directly relates to them and results in revenue. That is, from manufacturer to consumer. They aren’t incentivised to concern themselves with transactions outside of this except where doing so may result in a higher initial transaction value or ongoing brand value. Take for example cars, they naturally lose value over time, but brands that are perceived to hold their value over time tend to also demand retail premiums. So given this, very few companies will design, manufacture and price taking into account externalities unless they are forced to. This is because there is no incentive for them to do so otherwise.
Carbon pricing is a clear example of this.
So, to really tackel problems with waste, pollution and design for obsolecsence, policy intervention is required. While many people are opposed to government intervention in markets, where intervention leads to long term productivity gains, it is justified and in-fact, imperitive that governments take action. In the case of externalities, the long term economic benefits area clear and include reduced waste, better quality products and better resource use efficiency. So, policy intervention actually results in driving up the long run production possibilities curve for an economy, exactly what governments should be concerned with.
The other element to this is innovation. Business, like life, works on a process of creation and destruction. Value is created through new things, new production or even just new transactions (of old goods). Innovation is by nature destructive, since it displaces existing technologies. And what’s more, the benefits of innovation are usually realised by the second or third owner of the innovation. This is why companies would resist change, because they are likely to spend the money innovating (by complying with regulation) but are not necessarily likely to benefit from the innovation. In-fact, it could even send them broke. It is for this reason that the lights will never go – as claimed by some fossil fuel dependent generators – out as a result of a carbon price. All that will happen is that certain shareholders will lose their money as a company becomes goes bankrupt. However, another group of owners will come in and purchase the assets, probably at a bargain price, and continue to manage the company. This company would then potentially be more profitable as all costs are sunk and debts written off by the old entity. Thus, creative destruction. This is what happened with Great Southern Plantations in Australia. I’m not saying people don’t lose out, because they do, and often it’s smaller investors who haven’t understood the risks of their investment. However, in the long run, the economy benefits.
To conclude, government should really be responsible for picking losers, not winners. And after all, the government is really just the biggest bully of them all, and bullies are excellent at picking on ‘losers’.
TK
Watched my first film tonight in Indonesia and was impressed that there wasn’t any censorship. Well actually, I think there was some for particularly gruesome scenes but that’s ok, I’d rather not watch those anyway. However, as for swearing, nudity (including full frontal), sex scenes, all the fun things, they made it through! I welcome relief after watching movies in Malaysia which censored pretty much everything, rendering some films unwatchable.
Incidentally, the movie was “Halloween”, and no, I don’t recommend it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The US arming has provided funding for a system of communicating messages by thought alone.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/14/2390439.htm?site=science&topic=latest
Considering that DARPA was behind GPS and the Internet (sorry Al), don’t be surprised if you perceive this in a thought wave near you soon!
We can already start creating the terminology. Tmail, Tetter, Tic.
Oh, and maybe then one day, the babelfish will become a reality, since, if they had, for example, a chinese version of this, the machines could do the translation on the fly so to speak and then translate to any other language. Couldn’t they?
Europe is now at a critical point in terms of the future of climate change policy in the EU and around the world.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/14/europe/union.php
With the policy focus now firmly on the financial crisis an a looming recession, climate change is seen as risky territory for politicians. Britain provided the framework to the EU for tackling problems in the financial system, Australia could have provided – and still has a chance to provide – a framework for the world for tackling climate change.
The same issues are arising in the EU as in Australia, namely:
- Where and how should the burden fall?
- Who, if anyone, should be protected and to what extent?
- How should funds generated from pricing carbon be redistributed?
- What is the correct framework for handling countries with fewer emission ’sins’ to atone for (i.e. developing countries who are yet to emit levels that developed countries have to date, but are well on their way).
If Australia can answer the questions above when it presents its final paper on the issue (originally due early next year I believe but perhaps delayed now?), then it will do the world a great service and any actions we take will be noticed on the world stage. The Garnaut Review made some good inroads to answer these questions, although stated targets were disappointingly low.
There seems to be a lot of pessimism and uncertainty about at the moment (alternatively, it’s just a reflection me personally OR, I’ve been paying too much attention to mainstream media outlets !). Issues around a global economic slow down, food and energy price inflation and climate/environmental issues are making for a pretty grim outlook.
Looking at the political climate however, I think things are actually looking up. Particularly, I’m positive because:
- Howard is out here in Australia. (anyone making a big deal out of Rudd’s salute to Bush, lighten up!)
- Bush will soon be out in the states
- Malaysia has (for the first time since it’s independence) a sizable opposition party and the potential for much needed reforms.
- China (I know there a very serious issues around Tibet and Xinjiang and these need to be addressed) is symbolically re-entering the world stage. Hosting the Olympics in August this year which will hopefully help to pry China open and fuel social, environmental and political reforms (and by this I do not mean ‘democracy’ as most westerners would understand it)
- Mugabe’s disastrous rule may finally be coming to an end (although what happens after is yet unclear)
So, I think there are some good leaders in place around the world and that despite the various challenges we face, things are looking up!
We often hear about the deforestation occurring throughout the world usually in far away places such as Brazil or Indonesia (ok, not so far away). This problem is often seen (by myself at least) as being remote and a problem to be solved in the countries facing the problems by increased economic growth and education.
However, an interesting article in Scientific American highlights that most of the unsustainable and illegal logging is occurring as a result of demand tracing back to developed countries and companies. Perhaps we as consumers need to pay more attention to what we are buying and where it comes from.
In this regard, I think companies need to provide more information in the way of product provenance details. On the example of trees and timber (although it applies to many commodoties in our world), think of all the furniture in Melbourne shops such as Myer, Harvey Norman, Officeworks and other smaller retailers. How many of those stores are aware that the products they import (in the case of Officeworks, 95% of furniture comes from China) are directly linked to the unsustainable destruction of forests?
This also highlights another problem with our current society, the importance of low cost competition. Because let’s face it, we all love the fact that we can buy a $59 leatherette chair from Officeworks. In fact, I bought a table from Officeworks which for all I know traces it’s origin back to illegal logging half-way around the world. And let’s say one of the giant retailers took the lead and decided to make sure it’s suppliers only used sustainable timber (and let consumers know just how and why it was sustainable), how would this affect the price? It’s fair to say that most consumers would opt for the $79 chair – with no questions asked – over the $139 chair which uses sustainable and legal materials. The sad part is that these same people would probably go home after buying such a product and shake their heads at the rapid loss of our forests.
I would like to see more information provided to consumers on where their products come from in Australia. We have had it for food and drinks for many years. Now it is time for it to be applied to many other products.
Check out my post at Simantic. Having lived (and currently still living) in countries where freedom of speach and the media are severely restricted, this situation occurring in Australia is extremely disappointing.
Since I’ve been back in KL for over a week now, I guess it’s time to write something about my experience on Redang with the turtle conservation program. I started writing this just now and it’s become huge, I think I’ll break it up into several posts.
So, I’ll start from the beginning.
The turtle conservation program on Redang Island has it’s own private beach, Chagar Hutang…wait, too far foward… We need a geography lesson for Malaysia first. Malaysia is made up of Peninsula(West) Malaysia and East Malaysia. These are completely separated geographically. KL is located in the west of West Malaysia. My destination was Kuala Terengganu which is located on the east coast of West Malaysia, approximately 8 hours by bus away from KL. See the map below already, its great and also shows the route of the bus from KL to Kuala Terengganu (my educated guess at least);
Thus, I set out on a Thursday morning to Chinatown in KL where the long distance bus station is located. I didn’t have a ticket so got there early (around 11am I think) and set about arranging a ticket. This is not so difficult at the bus station since there are roving sales people all over the place asking you where you want to go. If they work for a company selling tickets to the place you want to go, they will eagerly guide you to the promised booth. Thus, I arrived at a booth selling tickets to Kuala Terengganu(hereafter “KT”) and as lonely planet had informed me, shelled out 30 beans for a one way coach ticket leaving to KT at 10pm that night. However, they didn’t actually give me a ticket, well, it was a ticket of sorts, some scribbled notes about price, time and destination, at the time I thought it was a bit more like a ticket IOU but I thought nothing much more of it. Anyway, they told me to be back at 9pm, so, I left and set about spending 9 or so hours in Chinatown while I waited for my bus.
12:30 – 8:45 —-uneventful time. watched Pan’s Labrynth in the backpackers I stayed in when I first got to KL(great movie actually), loitered about, lost my combined flashlight/pen/laser, that’s it…oh and ate some rambutans…
8:45 arrived and it was time to head to the bus station and wait for my bus. Arriving at the booth I had patronised earlier, I presented the ‘IOU’ ticket eager to claim the official boarding pass. The service was a bit slower this time around, and only the low level spruiker type workers where nearby. They looked at the IOU and then went over to the boss who was sitting down nearby. They chatted for a bit too long which made me think there was some sort of problem. After that, the boss beckoned me over since she deemed me not important enough of a concern to interrupt her seated rest. Wanting to find out what the problem was, I went over and she said “so we’ll put you on the midnight bus ok, no tickets left for the 10pm one”. I was pretty annoyed since they had originally said the 9pm one was sold out and to get the 10pm one. Also, I had been loitering about the area for 9 hours and was thus not going to take this injustice! So, I politely but directly told them that I needed a 10pm ticket and reminded them that they had sold me one(I now found out that the IOU was like a tentative statement of agreement to trade). So, the boss said to have a seat and one of the workers went off to work something out. In the end, a 10pm ticket was found and it was all good, I don’t know what the initial problem was but I’ll definitely try to get a proper ticket when paying next time.
By this time it was about 9:30, so I sat around for a few minutes and learnt some Malay words from the people selling tickets, the only one I can remember is “gila” which means crazy/mad. So, it got to around 9:45 and I thought I should buy some snacks for the trip and then head to the terminal. I boarded the coach at about 9:55 and so was expecting it to be taking off reasonably soon. Anyway, 10pm rolled by and the bus was less than half full and no driver in sight. An African family(from Sudan I later found out) hopped on around 10:10 and with four kids were suitably snacked out. Looking at their rations compared to mine, I realised that I may have underestimated my needs for the 8 hour journey. Basically, they had twisties and as we all know twisties are great and I felt I needed some for the journey. Whatever the reason, I decided that with the bus still quite empty and with no driver to be seen, I should venture out to a nearby 7-11 to get some additional supplies. Around this time a guy hopped on to check peoples tickets, so, I thought I would have no time to go and expected to be leaving quite soon. But another 5 minutes passed and still nothing was happening, the twisties were calling and my dietary desires had to be satiated. So, I approached the ticket guy and told him I wanted to go to buy some snacks and would be 5 minutes, I asked him if this was ok and after checking his watch he said “yes, but be quick”. So (leaving my bags in the luggage hold and my initial rations on my seat) I hopped off and jogged down to the 7-11 which was within sight of the bus. I went in and efficiently paid for and purchased some Twisties (Original Cheese flavour of course), a bottle of Lipton Green Iced Tea and some Chips-Ahoy cookies. Feeling relieved with twisties and lipton green tea in hand, I exited the 7-11 and proceeded to walk on the road back towards the bus which was still visible where I had left it.
However, looking at the bus I noticed that the luggage compartment door was closed (the 7-11 was close but not exactly a stones throw away, perhaps a few hundred metres away) so I thought I should pick up the pace and that the driver was perhaps ready to roll. Although the ticket guy knew I would be back soon and I thought I should be safe, nonetheless I decided to speed things up.
Just after making this sensible decision, I saw the door on the bus close and without delay observed motion of either the earth or the bus wheels rotating (it turned out to be both). At this point, I may have muttered a profanity and proceeded to run up the middle of the road waiving – snacks in hand – at the bus, which had luckily set off in the direction I was returning from. Since Malaysian public transport doesn’t usually bother with the formal rigidity of designated stops, my desperate motioning of the driver were enough to cause him to slow down and let me (re)board in the middle of a three lane road.
The seriousness of the trouble that I would have experienced had I missed my bus, and thus said goodbye to all my things, did not really hit me. I have a strange naivity when travelling and nothing that bad has really happened to me so far. I think it has something to do with submitting to “The Way”, I recommend you try it. Anyway, I was more struck by the comic nature of the entire event and was relieved to be Twisties in hand on my way to KT.
You can see in the picture below my elation at having caught my bus with adequate rations in hand! Yay, peace! or V for victory in Asia.
Ok that will do for now, Pt.2 should cover a little bit about the trip on the bus (nothing interesting really) and then some things about KT I guess.
An interesting lingua franca audio program about Australian’s attitudes towards Indonesia and Asia in general and discusses our low levels of foreign language studies.
Very interesting points raised however I would add that every Indonesian that I have talked to on my trip has been shocked when I had planned to learn Indonesian. Their reacting is usually something like, “what for? its useless!”. I kid you not. This has been the reaction of just about every Indonesian I’ve spoken to. Secondly, if I tell them I want to go there, they nearly always say that it’s dangerous and that they might ‘bully’ me there being a foreigner. Now, this should be taken in context since most – in fact all – of the people i’ve asked have been Chinese Indonesians. If you follow the situation in Indonesia you will know why this might impact on their attitudes towards Indonesia. Anyway, I should also add that just about every Indonesian I’ve met has been very very nice and friendly and most have very good opinions and attitutes towards Australia. To be honest, I think they are mostly shocked that we want to learn Indonesian since they all want to learn English. Oh, and I would also add – since they don’t mention it in the program – that if you can speak Indonesian you can get by very well in Malaysia since the languages are very similar. I still think it is a very useful language in the region just that perhaps it’s more useful in political circles than business ones.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2007/1878187.htm
Any thoughts on Indonesia by my many readers? That’s you Sim and Sarah….. 