Greedebt – a new word!

My recent post about Joseph and his Techno IPod certainly got a few people thinking but my frustration with politicians and leaders continues to grow as fast as the worsening financial crisis in Europe.  An article in the Dominion Post recently had news that Greek politicians wanted to withdraw from the European Union and start printing their own currency.  That’s a bit like Labour’s election promises of more benefit money and National’s claims that they can get grwoth going again.  It all appears to be fairyland stuff to me.

The problem seems to me to be a cycle of greed and debt so I’ve invented a new word to describe this cycle -greedebt.  Coming from the phrase Greek Debt which is going to be an implosion second only to the shock waves that will come out of the collapse of the Italian economy, it describes the economic cycle of  growth fuelled by ramapant consumerism generating unrealistic and unnecessary demand paid for by debt which is in turn fuelled by greed which eventually overwhelms the ability of the economy to sustain the growth – hence greedebt.  I’m sure the economists in this world will be able to tidy up the definition but let me use some examples to explain.

There is an economic mantra that says all will be solved by growth but as long ago as 1990 John Robinson in his book Excess Capital was describing the paradox of poverty and plenty, how the fruits of human progress are destroying modern society and the environment.  “The capitalist system, into which the citizens of the developed markets countries were born, thrives on growth.  Once created, capital must be reinvested into some new profitable enterprise.  Such a system eventually experiences wobbles when the economy becomes sufficiently prosperous.”  I would add to Robinson’s idea the thought that modern society, in all its inventiveness, allowed greed to stoke the fires of growth.  How much can any man need?  I know we all want more but how much do we really need?  So greed, the lust for bigger, better, more helped fuel growth – but at what cost.

As consumerism became the new religion we wanted more but didn’t have the means to pay so the greedy came up with lots of ways for us to have now, pay later.  When my wife and I started on our married life we saved to buy a section, eventually built a modest house (with debt of course) and when we moved in our total possessions amounted to a bed, a dining room table and chairs, a fridge, a washing machine and a car.  Over time we saved and laid a drive, built fences, erected a car port, bought a clothes drier, got more bedroom furniture for the arriving family and then treated ourselves to a telly.  Today when you buy a house the list of things that come with it is extensive.  Its a turn-key package paid for with debt in many cases.

At the national level the same thing happens of course.  In the Greek economy I am lead to believe that no-one pays taxes, everyone gets generous handouts such as superannuation and all this has been paid for by debt.

Hence my new word greedebt – debt fuelled by greed for more.

The worry is what happens when the house of cards that is the world’s financial system begins to fall?  One card at a time, will the house come tumbling down?  What does a post capitalist world look like?  What will it mean for the average person like me?

So many questions I think I might rush out and buy myself an IPod to satisfy my want for gadgets – booked up on my credit card of course.

 

 

Up, Up and away!

Over a period of several days we watched with interest as a building (historical but not importantly so) was attacked by workmen, its cladding removed and base exposed.  Then it was jacked up into the air and lowered onto the back of a large truck for removal.  As we passed the site on the corner of busy Napier street each day we speculated as to where it was going but all was revealed when its journey across the road (no more than 50 metres) was completed early one morning.

Pic004 April 2011

What would the vacated site next to the medical centre be used for?  Was the medical centre expanding? Would it be car parking for the medical centre?  All that expense to move the building must have been for a good reason we thought, but we quickly learnt that it was to enable the adjacent car sales yard to expand.

As if we didn’t already have enough land covered by car sales yards and we don’t already have enough cars consuming energy and polluting the air with their carbon emissions.

Throughout NZ there are many such car yards and as you walk past them in the morning you will often see the cars sitting with their motors running so that the car sales people know they are ready for the next customer who comes in and wants to look at the vehicle.

Obviously I’m a driver and use a car to get around so I’m as guilty as everyone else but I do have pangs of guilt so you’ll have to bear with me in this blog.

The question I’ve got is what are we going to do when the oil runs out?  Some, like me, think thats closer than we care to think about but others think its decades away and we’ll have some technology solution by then.  Whichever way you look at it the time will come and then we’ll have to change something in the way our society works.

So more space being taken over by car sales yards in a street in which two new dealerships in new or refurbished buildings opened in the past few years doesn’t seem like great progress to me.

Its a very wet day here so now I’ll have to get the car out to go to town, driving past the car sales yard on the way:-)

Tuis, noise and technology

The song of the tuis has returned to the Napier hill.  No, not the snap of a can being opened or the splashing of liquid into a glass, but the song of our native bird.  This morning the birds were in full voice, filling the peaceful morning with a most enjoyable sound.  As I did my daily constitutional I realised that the noise usually present in our streets was absent.  The birds were having a field day and I could actually hear them.

Of course those who live in big cities won’t be used to peace and quiet like we are here in the provinces but I do enjoy those moments when the world seems to retreat and we can enjoy the sound of, well, less noise than usual.

We do live in a very noisy world.  If it’s not the banging and clattering in cafes (making a pot of tea is positively silent by comparison to coffee) or the “background” music in shops, it’s the noise of traffic reverberating through the suburbs.

When the residents of New York looked out their windows and saw the first horseless carriages I suspect they were probably looking forward to no more clattering of the horses hooves or the pong of their droppings.  Little did they foresee what impact the technology of the automobile would have on our planet.  Quite apart from the greenhouse gases they emit in their operation and the resources consumed in their manufacture and running, vehicles are noisy.  People ride in them, cocooned in an air conditioned environment with the audio system playing their favourite music while outside the rumble, rattle and roar of the engine resonates with the road noise from the tyres.  Anyone in the vicinity cannot but notice the passage of the vehicle.

Is there a lesson there for us –if technology does hold the key to our future is it a better future?  Does the lesson of our noisy world suggest that perhaps not?  Maybe the future will be different but not an improvement/

Ps:  some people will appreciate the irony of me writing about a noisy world given my hobby of playing bagpipes 🙂

D&S Pipe Band on parade at Napier’s Art Deco

That’s me, front left talking to the band.

Technology and Food

How will you cope if the supermarkets in your community are unable to open? What will you eat? An interesting question given that the people of Christchurch have been experiencing just that in recent days?

One thing I miss from my childhood is the easy access to fresh food that our family was fortunate to have. I was brought up on a small farm just outside Hastings where my parents grew crops for J Wattie Canneries. Peas, all sorts of beans, asparagus and tomatoes were staple crops along with peaches, sweet corn and potatoes. I enjoyed being able to pick vegetables and eat them fresh, nothing like what you now get in the shops. The tangy white juice from sweet corn eaten on the cob (raw) is never matched by the flavour of processed corn. Eating a tomato off the plant in the paddock is a treat and being able to pick and eat peas off the vine in the paddock is, well, probably what I miss most.

We’ve developed a society where we are so many steps away from our food that when disaster strikes we are not able to fend for ourselves. Vegetables and fruit in our local super markets is grown hundreds of kilometres away even though you can go down the road and see a farm that once grew these things now covered in grape vines. Tins of peaches and tomatoes on the shelves contain fruit grown in China or Spain or Australia, rarely these days in New Zealand and, I suspect, not here in Hawke’s Bay. Tinned apricots, once the hall mark of Central Otago, are now imported from overseas.

This food chain depends on technology in so many ways that when something happens to disrupt that technology chaos ensues and we are left struggling. The transport chain is now so extended that it is, in my view, fragile. I worry about current events in the Middle East and the potential impact they will have on oil supplies because they will translate into another oil shock and the resulting crisis for New Zealand will, in my view, be something we have never experienced before.

My frustration is that I don’t have a simple answer. The world isn’t simple anymore and while the idea of going somewhere remote and getting back to basics sounds appealing, it’s not a practical solution. Te Radar tried it but I can’t see myself coping anywhere nearly as well as he did in that situation.

From time to time I grow some veges in pots but I won’t survive long on what I produce

My Vege Garden

I think I’ll settle for checking the cans of food and bottles of water I’ve got stored in my emergency kit in the garage and continuing to hope that any disaster doesn’t last longer than my tolerance of baked beans and peaches.

Technology and Nature

The sight of boulders crashing onto a building and wreckage in the streets of Christchurch made me think about the human struggle with nature.  Despite all the technology, we (humankind) are powerless in the face of nature’s floods (Queensland), fires (Victoria) and earthquakes (Napier and Christchurch).  The devastation wrought by nature overcomes our reinforced steel and flood schemes and no amount of computers, eco-friendly houses or hybrid cars can stop what nature wants to do to our human constructions.

Despite that, technology does play a part in how we respond and cope.  Already social media are (should that be is?) helping people connect and cell phones are being used by people trapped in the  rubble to let rescuers know of their plight.  I heard an interview with a person managing rescuers on the ground in Christchruch from a control centre in Auckland.  He was able to direct resources from throughout the country to give maximum effect to the rescue effort his organisation was making.

News media are making use of You Tube footage posted very quickly after the event and one FaceBook site I’ve looked at has messages of support along with enquiries seeking information about family.

Of course with technology we run the risk of repetition.  Last night’s TV footage seemed to be a repeat of much footage and while this was helpful to people who might just be turning the TV on later in the evening, it did appear as though they were struggling to get new info.

In the aftermath of the quake everyone has to contend with the need to look after their own well being and that of their family/friends while at the same time having a commitment to their work and/or community.  Many have to lift themselves above their own concerns and contribute to the rescue effort and I take my hat off to all of them doing that, their commitment and hard work is a stirring example to us all of what commuinity is about.

So to all the people of Christchurch my heart felt prayers at this time.  May the basic human characteristic of love and concern for each other win through and may technology help you connect with those you care about.

Technology and Sport

Decisions made by judges (or the voting panel) in the Halberg Awards have created quite a controversy.  While the first objective of this post is not to comment on them but to talk about the use of technology in sport, no doubt I’ll get fired up to make some observations about how silly the awards make us look as a sporting nation.

We’ve seen the introduction of the third umpire in sports such as rugby and league but I note that soccer hasn’t embraced technology as yet.  Cricket is also a code troubled by how to make use of technology.  The problem for cricket of course is that calling the umpires capabilities into question by suggesting that they might not be right is not cricket so to speak.

Things like motor sport use technology for timing events and they use replays of video recordings to make judicial decisions.  Swimming has used technology to time events and uses underwater viewing facilities to observe strokes.  Lots of sports use technology in various ways to aid decision making and enhance fairer results.

But in some things technology cannot be used.  Some spports such as diving or skating can’t be judged by techology, the human factor assesses things like style and execution.  I think of the musical field where the judging of musical performances is a subjective thing.  The pitch and tone, the feeling, the interpreatation of a piece is all in the listener’s ear so technology as such can’t be the judge.

And so it is when it comes to sportsperson of the year.  Who is the best team or coach?  Are the criteria based on how much public interest and how many media columns are generated by a team?  Or should the criteria be the more objective results, the number medals, the number of wins, the number of competitions won?  And does it matter if a team is consistently well ranked; does that then make them ineligible in subsequent years?

A case in point must be Gordon Tietjens, coach of the very successful NZ Sevens Rugby Team.  After guiding them to their fourth consequtive Commonwealth gold medal in 2010 he was named NZ Rugby’s Coach of the Year.  When you look at his track record of bringing the best out of young rugby players and winning world series over many (is it nine?) years how can you go past him for coach of the year?  Yet surprisingly he’s never won that award.

What would happen if someone developed an app that took all the performances of teams and players and ranked them based on things like the event result as it ranks in world standings, quality of opposition, consistency of performance and so on.  Objective data rather than subjective feelings (hype?).  At present technology runs on objective data so it would cut out the emotive feel good that seems to have played a part in the Halberg Awards.  But then we are after all human and perhaps we need events like that one to remind us that we are fallible as humans, we are only as good as our knowledge and education and people skills and connectedness.

Bring on the Rugby World Cup.  If the All Blacks draw all their games their consolation will be in knowing that they stand a good chance of being named NZ Sports Team of the Year.