 by Flemming Funch
Four years ago I was stopped for driving without insurance, and the court then gave me a big fine. I couldn't afford to pay either at the time, and even when I later got insurance, the fine sort of was forgotten until recently. But it all brings up reminders of the way I used to live, struggling with some different impossible financial situation every week. And it reminds me of the bureaucratic cruelties and insanities that certain segments of the population will have to put up with on a regular basis. "Oh, you can't afford to pay for insurance? Let's slap an extra $1000 on top of that for you to pay, and maybe that'll motivate you a little better!". And I realize now that it isn't just somebody being cruel. It is that the system is made by and for capitalists, and not for poor people. You know, if you sit at home with your bank statement and a spreadsheet, trying to optimize the use of your funds, you can quickly calculate that it serves you better to pay the insurance than to have to pay a fine. Then it's all quite logical and reasonable. But many people don't live in that world and don't experience themselves having such luxurious options.
But that principle of individuals rationally choosing how best to use the available resources, that isn't a bad principle at all. The problem is only if we focus on just one kind of resource, to the exclusion of all others. Traditional capitalist thinking focuses on the resource of money. Which is a little silly since the money itself is just a made up symbol, with no inherent value or use. There are other types of capital which are more grounded in the real world, and which have interent value. There is human capital - people and their labor, intelligence, culture and organization. and there is natural capital - living systems, natural resources, ecosystem services. Human and natural capital is inherently of value. When you make them thrive and expand it isn't just bigger numbers in computers - things are actually better. New awarenesses of these things are arising rapidly. More and more companies are starting to look at the "triple bottom line", or "quadruple bottom line". Different people define those in different ways, but the idea is to include several more dimensions in addition to financial results (benefitting shareholders): the social results (benefitting employees, customers, society), the environmental results, and possibly also the corporate or cultural values at play. An excellent starting point for revolutionary new thinking about natural capital is Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins.
It appears that the ozone hole is getting smaller, and might actually be gone by 2050 at the current rate.
There are signs of life on Venus say some scientists.
A Canadian Senate Committee calls for legalizing marijuana. The prohibition of marijuana use must end, proclaims says the Committee on Illegal Drugs. The unanimous report hopes to bring Canadian policy into the new millennium and out of the politically motivated and costly US-led War on (Some) Drugs. "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue,” explained Senator Pierre Nolin, the committee’s chairperson.
A Brief Introduction to the American Civil Liberties Union
"Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines." --Buckminster Fuller
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