http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/06/AR2008040601660.html
The Three Revolutions
By Henry A. Kissinger
Washington Post
Monday, April 7, 2008; A17
The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur.
Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President Bush's alleged unilateralism is at the heart of European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent soon after the change of administrations that the principal difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that America is still a traditional nation-state whose people respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider definition of the national interest than Europe's definition.
The nations of Europe, having been drained by two world wars, have agreed to transfer significant aspects of their sovereignties to the European Union. Political loyalties associated with the nation-state have proved not to be automatically transferable, however. Europe is in a transition between its past, which it seeks to overcome, and a future it has not yet reached.
In the process, the nature of the European state has been transformed. With nations no longer defining themselves by a distinct future and with the cohesion of the European Union as yet untested, the capacity of most European governments to ask their people for sacrifices has diminished dramatically. The states with the longest continuous histories, such as Britain and France, have been most willing to assume international military responsibilities.
The disagreement over the use of NATO forces in Afghanistan is a case in point. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the North Atlantic Council, acting without any request by the United States, invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, calling for mutual assistance. But when NATO set about to assume military responsibilities, domestic constraints obliged many of the allies to limit the number of troops provided and to constrict the missions for which lives could be risked. As a result, the Atlantic alliance is in the process of evolving a two-tiered system -- an alliance a la carte whose capability for common action does not match its general obligations. Over time, one of two adaptations must take place: either a redefinition of the general obligations or a formal elaboration of a two-tiered system in which political obligations and military capabilities are harmonized through some system of alliances of the willing.
While the traditional role of the state in Europe is being diminished by the choice of its governments, the declining role of the state in the Middle East is inherent in the way those states were founded. The successor states of the Ottoman Empire were established by the victorious powers at the end of the First World War. Unlike the European states, their borders did not reflect ethnic principles or linguistic distinctiveness but the balances between the European powers in their contests outside the region.
Today it is radical Islam that threatens the already brittle state structure via a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran as the basis of a universal political organization. Jihadist Islam rejects national sovereignty based on secular state models; it seeks to extend its reach to wherever significant populations profess the Muslim faith. Since neither the international system nor the internal structure of existing states has legitimacy in Islamist eyes, its ideology leaves little room for Western notions of negotiation or equilibrium in a region of vital interest to the security and well-being of the industrial states. That struggle is endemic; we do not have the option of withdrawal. We can retreat from any one place, such as Iraq, but only to be obliged to resist from new positions, probably more disadvantageously. Even advocates of unilateral withdrawal from Iraq speak of retaining residual forces to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda or radicalism.
These transformations take place against the backdrop of a third trend, a shift in the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Paradoxically, this redistribution of power is to a part of the world where nations still possess the characteristics of traditional European states. The major states of Asia -- China, Japan, India and, in time, possibly Indonesia -- view each other the way participants in the European balance of power did, as inherent competitors even when they occasionally participate in cooperative ventures.
In the past, such shifts in the structure of power generally led to war, as happened with the emergence of Germany in the late 19th century. Today the rise of China is assigned such a role in much alarmist commentary. True, the Sino-American relationship will inevitably contain classical geopolitical and competitive elements. These must not be neglected. But there are countervailing elements. Economic and financial globalization, environmental and energy imperatives, and the destructive power of modern weapons all impose a major effort at global cooperation, especially between the United States and China. An adversarial relationship would leave both countries in the position of Europe after the two world wars, when other societies achieved the preeminence the nations of Europe sought through self-destructive conflict with each other.
No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical.
In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives?
What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America's and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia's?
Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose?
What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community?
Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal?
What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?
This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Religious Environmentalists Lament Earth Day Commercial Opportunism, as Too Many Company Converts Raise Risks of 'Green' Vendor Fraud
http://adage.com/article?article_id=126362
Is Earth Day the New Christmas?: As More Marketers Pile On, Consumerism May Eclipse Spirit of Event
By Natalie Zmuda
April 14, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet.
As April 22 approaches, marketers of all stripes are bombarding consumers with green promotions and products designed to get them to buy more products -- some eco-friendly, some not so much. And while that message seems to contrast with the event's intent, the oxymoron seems to have been lost on marketers jumping on the Earth Day bandwagon in record numbers. This year it seems that just about everyone has found a way to attach themselves to what is fast becoming a marketing holiday that barely resembles the grass-roots event founded in 1970.
[IT IS QUITE COINCIDENTAL THAT THE 'MAKE OR BREAK' DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY IN THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA WILL TAKE PLACE ON APRIL 22, 2008, EARTH DAY. AMERICANS SHOULD EXPECT TO HEAR MUCH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT FROM MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA.]
"This month I've definitely seen a lot of companies that I never would have associated with green popping up," said Steven Addis, CEO of Addis Creson, a branding firm. "Companies are saying, 'We need something to green ourselves up, so let's ... sponsor Earth Day.' ... It's really now in this hype curve, and hopefully we're getting toward the top, so we can start having some fallout."
Sustainable for one day
Indeed, many have begun to worry that as nearly every company out there paints themselves green, they are losing touch with Earth Day's reason for being. "My concern is that some companies just view [Earth Day] as a marketing event, like Thanksgiving or Christmas," said Larry Light, chairman-CEO of Arcature, a management consulting firm.
"Then they've fulfilled their obligation for the rest of the year. The whole issue of sustainability means that a commitment also has to be sustainable. If it's only for one day, then it's a marketing event."
[THE PAGAN RELIGION OF ENVIRONMENTALISM HAS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE TO THANK FOR THIS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNISM AND 'ONE-DAY' CONSUMER CONFESSIONAL WORSHIP, GIVEN HIS GLOBAL CELEBRITY, BOX OFFICE RECEIPTS AND 'NOBEL PRIZE'.]
To be fair, many companies are already looking beyond the month of April by embracing comprehensive sustainability programs. But, regardless, the fact remains that as Earth Day approaches, consumers will find it difficult to avoid green messaging.
Consumers can, for example, shop at Banana Republic, where 1% of sales from April 22 through April 27 benefit the Trust for Public Land. Or they can participate in Macy's "Turn Over A New Leaf" campaign by making a $5 donation to the National Park Foundation. In exchange, customers receive 10% or 20% off most merchandise the weekend of April 26.
Newsweek subscribers can actually fashion the cover of the April 14 issue into an envelope to send plastic bags to Target in return for a reusable tote bag. Then there's Toys 'R' Us' launch of "enviro-friendly playthings," Sweet Leaf Tea's missive to "Don't just think green. ... Drink green" and Fairmont Hotels' introduction of "Lexus Hybrid Living Suites." These days even Barbie has a green-accessories collection.
Seeing green
Major marketing dollars are behind these efforts. Experts concede it's difficult to quantify the amount of money spent on green marketing, but, collectively, it's clear companies are spending tens of millions.
This month, Wal-Mart is running seven national 30-second spots, created by the Martin Agency. The commercials, bearing the tagline "Budget-friendly prices. Earth-friendly products," promote T-shirts made of recycled bottles and organic coffee, among other things.
In addition to charity shopping days, Macy's campaign involves giveaways of saplings and reusable totes, promotes eco-friendly merchandise and includes TV and newspaper advertising, as well as mention in the retailer's direct-mail catalog and in-store signage.
Clorox is also flexing its green muscles this month. Its Brita brand's integration with NBC's "The Biggest Loser" has resulted in the elimination of plastic water bottles from the show's campus. And with the season finale slated for Earth Day, the brand is planning plenty of in-store marketing around the TV program.
"It's not black or white," said Mr. Addis, of the Earth Day conundrum. "It's great that people are paying attention. It's great that companies are starting to do something, but what really drives me crazy is when it's used as a vehicle of greenwashing. I call it the 95-5 rule. Five percent of somebody's business is green, but 95% of their PR is green."
[WE WONDER WHEN THE STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL OF THE 50 U.S. STATES AND THE U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WILL DECIDE TO CONDUCT FORMAL INVESTIGATIONS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE WHETHER CONSUMERS HAVE UNWILLING BECOME THE VICTIMS OF WIDESPREAD VENDOR FRAUD and/or MISREPRESENTATION AS THE RESULT OF CORPORATE 'GREENWASHING'.]
Wolves in green clothing
And that seems to be the sentiment among many experts, who recognize that separating the good from the bad is a tricky endeavor.
"There are some companies that are still feeling their way around and probably greenwashing to some extent," said Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer of Tree Hugger and VP-operations of Planet Green Interactive. "This is the problem of our times, but anything that raises awareness is good."
Experts said that, generally, initiatives that raise money for a specific cause or increase awareness, such as Macy's "Turn Over a New Leaf" campaign, are in keeping with the Earth Day message. However, those companies that play up tenuous links to Earth Day simply to drive sales are contributing to the din and confusing consumers.
[UNTIL NOW, RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DIDN'T MIND TOO MUCH IF THE ADHERENTS WERE HERETICS AS LONG AS IT SOUNDED GOOD.]
The Federal Trade Commission has begun to respond to concerns about that. It announced in November it would begin reviewing its green-marketing guides, last updated in 1998, this year. The move comes a year ahead of schedule, in response to the increase in green-advertising claims, the FTC said.
Wal-Mart: Ads tout recycled materials.
But until the FTC updates its guidelines, the green-marketing landscape is akin to the Wild, Wild West. Anybody, it seems, can claim the mantle of green, if it suits them.
[THIS IS THE PRIMARY PROBLEM WITH PROCLAIMING ONE'S GREENNESS - THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE-BASED STANDARDS, ONLY SUBJECTIVE POLITICAL STANDARDS.]
"The combination of indiscriminate messaging, where everybody has a green message [and some are] flat out greenwashing, and people who are clearly not friends of the environment portraying themselves as that is leading a lot of people to be a little more skeptical," said Alex Steffen, executive editor of World Changing, a sustainability blog.
[IN OTHER WORDS, MANY WHO SUPPORT MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA, AND ARGUABLY EVEN THESE CANDIDATES, AND AL GORE
, ARE INSINCERE ABOUT THEIR 'GREEN' CREDENTIALS. THEY MERELY SEEK TO MAKE $$ GREEN FROM APPEARING 'GREEN'. THIS REALITY GIVES CREDENCE TO THE ARGUMENT THAT CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED BY THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS INTO AN HYSTERIA TRULY SERVE AS FALSE PRETENSES FOR MORE & MORE GOVERNMENT REGULATION THAT CAN MAKE POLITICAL SUPPORTERS MUCH $$ MONEY.]
Saving the world ... yawn
And, if skepticism among consumers increases, one concern is that they could stop paying attention altogether. "Consumers can see through messaging that is not backed with a longer-term commitment to green," said David Wigder, senior VP-Digitas and author of the blog Marketing Green. "Moreover, if consumers are bombarded with too much messaging, they may simply tune it out."
[EVEN THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS SENSE A 'TRAIN WRECK' OF SORTS IF CONSUMERS BEGIN TO LEARN HOW THEY ARE BEING DUPED BY ALL OF THE GREEN PROPAGANDA PROMOTED IN THE MEDIA AND NOW BY INDUSTRY.]
Maureen O'Connor, publisher of sustainability blog Alternative Consumer, said the number of green pitches hitting her inbox is just one indication of the amount of noise in the market. "There are so many wannabes, it's frightening," she said. "There is such a proliferation of PR efforts that are over the top."
[EXACTLY RIGHT. ENVIRONMENTAL 'NOISE' / CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA / RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NONSENSE / GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON.]
That is leading some to declare Earth Day an overcommercialized event that has lost the cachet that made it so successful in the first place.
"Earth Day's usefulness has passed," said Mr. Steffen. "The idea that we're going to direct our attention to the planet for a day or a week ... is not a sufficient response anymore. An awful lot of people view Earth Day as the time to express the idea that they are sympathetic to change. We need to move from being sympathetic to change to actually changing things."
[THIS IS WHERE MONSIEUR OBAMA'S 'CHANGE' MANTRA COMES IN - HE WANTS TO CHANGE AMERICA INTO EUROPE WHERE THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DETERMINE EUROPEAN UNION SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND LEGAL POLICIES.]
Beware the Bloggers
As consumers become increasingly skeptical of green marketing messages, there's no better forum than the blogosphere.
Bloggers, with their witty posts and reputation for carefully vetting information, are fast becoming the most trusted resource for truly green products and promotions. As David Binkowski, senior VP-director of word-of-mouth marketing at Manning Selvage & Lee put it, "[It] better not just be window dressing, because bloggers fact-check everything."
[THAT IS WHY THE ITSSD JOURNALS HAVE BEEN CREATED: TO EXPOSE THE HYPOCRISY AND FALSE PRETENSES BEHIND THE DESIRED OVERREGULATION OF PRIVATE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES/PROPERTY RIGHTS, HERE & ABROAD.]
Blogroll:
alternativeconsumer.com
biopact.com
causerelatedmarketing.blogspot.com
eco-chick.com
ecofriend.org
ecogeek.com
ecorazzi.com
greenlivingideas.com
greenthinkers.org
gristmill.org
groovygreen.com
inhabitat.com
jetsongreen.com
lime.com
marketinggreen.wordpress.com
sustainablog.org
thegoodhuman.com
theoildrum.com
treehugger.com
worldchanging.com
A recent report from Nielsen Online ranked Tree Hugger, World Changing, The Oil Drum and Alternative Consumer among the most popular sustainability blogs on the web. And all are far from ragtag operations.
Motley crew
The sites boast a mix of activists, scholars and experts in topics as varied as green building, energy and nutrition. Some came to the cause early -- one of Alternative Consumer's bloggers is Zach McGrath, a high-school junior -- but others, such as Tree Hugger's Kenny Luna, turned green more recently in response to climatic events.
Tree Hugger is the largest of the environmental blogs, with 10 staffers and more than 50 regular contributors around the world. Its founder, Graham Hill, dabbled in fashion, viral e-mail and plant-based air filters, among other things, before launching the site in 2004. He's also the guy that designed the ceramic cup that looks like a paper cup and reads, "We are happy to serve you."
According to Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer, as one of the more influential green sites out there, Tree Hugger aims to take advertising that adds as much value to the site as the content. Advertisers include Wal-Mart, Simple Shoes, Envirolet composting toilets and a band, The Weepies.
Pitching in
But even a smaller organization, such as Alternative Consumer, has eight regular contributors. Founded in 2007 by Maureen O'Connor, a native New Yorker, the site takes more of a lifestyle approach to green topics. Recent posts highlight hemp skirts and outdoor furniture made from recycled milk jugs, detergent containers and the like. Advertising, meanwhile, runs the gamut from smaller green companies touting plastic-free diapers and eco-friendly dog sweaters to national brands such as GE, Sun Chips and Hush Puppies.
The nonprofit blog World Changing counts 150 contributors around the globe, with 25 regulars and five staff members. Its ranks include writers in Stockholm, Shanghai, Mumbai and Las Vegas, as well as one "Global Nomad." The Oil Drum, which carries only barebones Google ads, is slightly more mysterious. Its writers are largely anonymous and include "Prof. Goose," a professor in the social sciences, and "Heading Out," a faculty member in an energy production discipline.
-- Natalie Zmuda and Michael Bush
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http://news.aol.com/story/_a/even-funerals-are-going-green/20080420074309990001
Even Funerals Are Going Green
AP
LONDON (April 20)
It's no longer enough to live a greener life — now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too.
Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. See, e.g., http://www.stibbards.co.uk/ecocoffins.htm ; http://www.greenendings.co.uk/coffinsandurns.htm ;
"People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals.
Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition.
Some may expect green funerals to be as cheap as a do-it-yourself project, while others might brace for price hikes similar to those fair trade food.
But, funeral directors say green funerals — like any — run the gamut.
"It's about choice, not price," said Fran Hall, marketing director for Epping Forest Burial Park.
For a concept aimed at saving the Earth by going back to basics, an eco-funeral can be more complicated than it sounds. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries.
"You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director.
In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system.
Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Coffins on display included one made from wicker and decorated with flowers.
One visitor, Linda McDowall, admired another coffin bundled in a beige, leaf-adorned felt shroud, saying it looked comfortable.
"Cozy and warm are not words you associate with death," said McDowall, a 48-year-old German and French translator.
Cardboard coffins — which are as thick as their wooden counterparts — can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months.
"The trouble is, they are a bit ungainly to use," said Oakfield Wood burial ground director Oliver Peacock. "They're not terribly easy to handle and if it's wet, they don't look their best either."
Particular care is taken in how coffins are buried at eco-friendly graveyards like Oakfield Wood, Peacock said.
The cemetery was a pasture when it opened in 1995. It is now speckled with more than 1,600 trees that mark plots along with a wooden plaque.
Marble tombstones are frowned upon. Jeremy Smite, a funeral director at Green Endings, notes that shipping and mining produce carbon and that marble is not a renewable resource.
For cremations — which account for 70 percent of British funerals — a person's ashes and the remains of the eco-friendly coffin are placed in bamboo, glass or ceramic urns.
New legislation in Britain requires reductions in the mercury content of plastics and treatments used in coffins starting in 2010. All biodegradable coffins meet the new standards.
Cassidy said small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions.
"What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about/environz/environz-nov07/page10.html
Move over for Sustainable Product Design
(New Zealand Ministry for the Environment website)
November 2007
Sustainability is a driving force for product innovation and yes, it’s good for our environment, too.
Mortality is not something people like to dwellon every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin?
Mortality is not something people like to dwell on every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin? Plastic, synthetic linings and glue containing formaldehyde are features in most New Zealand coffins. Now that more New Zealanders are becoming aware of their impact on the environment, the demand for natural burials and eco-friendly coffins is growing.
[WE SURMISE THAT ALL OF THAT ISOLATION & SHEEP FARMING IN OCEANIA MUST HAVE GOTTEN TO THESE KIWIS]
This is where the Return to Sender eco coffin, designed by Greg Holdsworth from Holdsworth Design, comes into play. It uses a minimum of materials which are also bio-degradable and non-toxic.
The interest in and uptake of the coffin are proof that its stylish, unique design appeals to a wide range of people, not just ‘green’ consumers. It is a great example of how good product design can go hand-in-hand with sustainable principles.
Designers are increasingly aware they have a responsibility to include sustainable principles into their work, says Cathy Veninga, Chief Executive Officer of Designers Institute of New Zealand.
“Ideally, products should be designed in such a way that consumers can rest assured the product of their choice is sustainably sound,” said Veninga.
With research showing that about 70 per cent of the environmental impacts of a product are determined at design stage, thinking about sustainability at the drawing board is an effective way to improve a product’s green credentials.
The Return to Sender eco coffin won a silver award for sustainable product design at the 2007 BeST Design Awards, supported by the Ministry. Formway Furniture struck gold, at the same awards, for their Met Adapt office furniture range.
However, the design world are not the only ones thinking sustainability at the drawing-board. Awareness is also gaining moment in the packaging industry.
Is Earth Day the New Christmas?: As More Marketers Pile On, Consumerism May Eclipse Spirit of Event
By Natalie Zmuda
April 14, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet.
As April 22 approaches, marketers of all stripes are bombarding consumers with green promotions and products designed to get them to buy more products -- some eco-friendly, some not so much. And while that message seems to contrast with the event's intent, the oxymoron seems to have been lost on marketers jumping on the Earth Day bandwagon in record numbers. This year it seems that just about everyone has found a way to attach themselves to what is fast becoming a marketing holiday that barely resembles the grass-roots event founded in 1970.[IT IS QUITE COINCIDENTAL THAT THE 'MAKE OR BREAK' DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY IN THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA WILL TAKE PLACE ON APRIL 22, 2008, EARTH DAY. AMERICANS SHOULD EXPECT TO HEAR MUCH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT FROM MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA.]
"This month I've definitely seen a lot of companies that I never would have associated with green popping up," said Steven Addis, CEO of Addis Creson, a branding firm. "Companies are saying, 'We need something to green ourselves up, so let's ... sponsor Earth Day.' ... It's really now in this hype curve, and hopefully we're getting toward the top, so we can start having some fallout."
Sustainable for one dayIndeed, many have begun to worry that as nearly every company out there paints themselves green, they are losing touch with Earth Day's reason for being. "My concern is that some companies just view [Earth Day] as a marketing event, like Thanksgiving or Christmas," said Larry Light, chairman-CEO of Arcature, a management consulting firm."Then they've fulfilled their obligation for the rest of the year. The whole issue of sustainability means that a commitment also has to be sustainable. If it's only for one day, then it's a marketing event."
[THE PAGAN RELIGION OF ENVIRONMENTALISM HAS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE TO THANK FOR THIS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNISM AND 'ONE-DAY' CONSUMER CONFESSIONAL WORSHIP, GIVEN HIS GLOBAL CELEBRITY, BOX OFFICE RECEIPTS AND 'NOBEL PRIZE'.]
To be fair, many companies are already looking beyond the month of April by embracing comprehensive sustainability programs. But, regardless, the fact remains that as Earth Day approaches, consumers will find it difficult to avoid green messaging.
Consumers can, for example, shop at Banana Republic, where 1% of sales from April 22 through April 27 benefit the Trust for Public Land. Or they can participate in Macy's "Turn Over A New Leaf" campaign by making a $5 donation to the National Park Foundation. In exchange, customers receive 10% or 20% off most merchandise the weekend of April 26.
Newsweek subscribers can actually fashion the cover of the April 14 issue into an envelope to send plastic bags to Target in return for a reusable tote bag. Then there's Toys 'R' Us' launch of "enviro-friendly playthings," Sweet Leaf Tea's missive to "Don't just think green. ... Drink green" and Fairmont Hotels' introduction of "Lexus Hybrid Living Suites." These days even Barbie has a green-accessories collection.
Seeing green
Major marketing dollars are behind these efforts. Experts concede it's difficult to quantify the amount of money spent on green marketing, but, collectively, it's clear companies are spending tens of millions.
This month, Wal-Mart is running seven national 30-second spots, created by the Martin Agency. The commercials, bearing the tagline "Budget-friendly prices. Earth-friendly products," promote T-shirts made of recycled bottles and organic coffee, among other things.
In addition to charity shopping days, Macy's campaign involves giveaways of saplings and reusable totes, promotes eco-friendly merchandise and includes TV and newspaper advertising, as well as mention in the retailer's direct-mail catalog and in-store signage.
Clorox is also flexing its green muscles this month. Its Brita brand's integration with NBC's "The Biggest Loser" has resulted in the elimination of plastic water bottles from the show's campus. And with the season finale slated for Earth Day, the brand is planning plenty of in-store marketing around the TV program.
"It's not black or white," said Mr. Addis, of the Earth Day conundrum. "It's great that people are paying attention. It's great that companies are starting to do something, but what really drives me crazy is when it's used as a vehicle of greenwashing. I call it the 95-5 rule. Five percent of somebody's business is green, but 95% of their PR is green."
[WE WONDER WHEN THE STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL OF THE 50 U.S. STATES AND THE U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WILL DECIDE TO CONDUCT FORMAL INVESTIGATIONS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE WHETHER CONSUMERS HAVE UNWILLING BECOME THE VICTIMS OF WIDESPREAD VENDOR FRAUD and/or MISREPRESENTATION AS THE RESULT OF CORPORATE 'GREENWASHING'.]
Wolves in green clothing
And that seems to be the sentiment among many experts, who recognize that separating the good from the bad is a tricky endeavor."There are some companies that are still feeling their way around and probably greenwashing to some extent," said Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer of Tree Hugger and VP-operations of Planet Green Interactive. "This is the problem of our times, but anything that raises awareness is good."
Experts said that, generally, initiatives that raise money for a specific cause or increase awareness, such as Macy's "Turn Over a New Leaf" campaign, are in keeping with the Earth Day message. However, those companies that play up tenuous links to Earth Day simply to drive sales are contributing to the din and confusing consumers.
[UNTIL NOW, RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DIDN'T MIND TOO MUCH IF THE ADHERENTS WERE HERETICS AS LONG AS IT SOUNDED GOOD.]
The Federal Trade Commission has begun to respond to concerns about that. It announced in November it would begin reviewing its green-marketing guides, last updated in 1998, this year. The move comes a year ahead of schedule, in response to the increase in green-advertising claims, the FTC said.
Wal-Mart: Ads tout recycled materials.
But until the FTC updates its guidelines, the green-marketing landscape is akin to the Wild, Wild West. Anybody, it seems, can claim the mantle of green, if it suits them.
[THIS IS THE PRIMARY PROBLEM WITH PROCLAIMING ONE'S GREENNESS - THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE-BASED STANDARDS, ONLY SUBJECTIVE POLITICAL STANDARDS.]
"The combination of indiscriminate messaging, where everybody has a green message [and some are] flat out greenwashing, and people who are clearly not friends of the environment portraying themselves as that is leading a lot of people to be a little more skeptical," said Alex Steffen, executive editor of World Changing, a sustainability blog.
[IN OTHER WORDS, MANY WHO SUPPORT MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA, AND ARGUABLY EVEN THESE CANDIDATES, AND AL GORE
, ARE INSINCERE ABOUT THEIR 'GREEN' CREDENTIALS. THEY MERELY SEEK TO MAKE $$ GREEN FROM APPEARING 'GREEN'. THIS REALITY GIVES CREDENCE TO THE ARGUMENT THAT CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED BY THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS INTO AN HYSTERIA TRULY SERVE AS FALSE PRETENSES FOR MORE & MORE GOVERNMENT REGULATION THAT CAN MAKE POLITICAL SUPPORTERS MUCH $$ MONEY.]Saving the world ... yawn
And, if skepticism among consumers increases, one concern is that they could stop paying attention altogether. "Consumers can see through messaging that is not backed with a longer-term commitment to green," said David Wigder, senior VP-Digitas and author of the blog Marketing Green. "Moreover, if consumers are bombarded with too much messaging, they may simply tune it out."
[EVEN THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS SENSE A 'TRAIN WRECK' OF SORTS IF CONSUMERS BEGIN TO LEARN HOW THEY ARE BEING DUPED BY ALL OF THE GREEN PROPAGANDA PROMOTED IN THE MEDIA AND NOW BY INDUSTRY.]
Maureen O'Connor, publisher of sustainability blog Alternative Consumer, said the number of green pitches hitting her inbox is just one indication of the amount of noise in the market. "There are so many wannabes, it's frightening," she said. "There is such a proliferation of PR efforts that are over the top."
[EXACTLY RIGHT. ENVIRONMENTAL 'NOISE' / CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA / RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NONSENSE / GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON.]
That is leading some to declare Earth Day an overcommercialized event that has lost the cachet that made it so successful in the first place.
"Earth Day's usefulness has passed," said Mr. Steffen. "The idea that we're going to direct our attention to the planet for a day or a week ... is not a sufficient response anymore. An awful lot of people view Earth Day as the time to express the idea that they are sympathetic to change. We need to move from being sympathetic to change to actually changing things."
[THIS IS WHERE MONSIEUR OBAMA'S 'CHANGE' MANTRA COMES IN - HE WANTS TO CHANGE AMERICA INTO EUROPE WHERE THE RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DETERMINE EUROPEAN UNION SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND LEGAL POLICIES.]
Beware the Bloggers
As consumers become increasingly skeptical of green marketing messages, there's no better forum than the blogosphere.Bloggers, with their witty posts and reputation for carefully vetting information, are fast becoming the most trusted resource for truly green products and promotions. As David Binkowski, senior VP-director of word-of-mouth marketing at Manning Selvage & Lee put it, "[It] better not just be window dressing, because bloggers fact-check everything."
[THAT IS WHY THE ITSSD JOURNALS HAVE BEEN CREATED: TO EXPOSE THE HYPOCRISY AND FALSE PRETENSES BEHIND THE DESIRED OVERREGULATION OF PRIVATE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES/PROPERTY RIGHTS, HERE & ABROAD.]
Blogroll:
alternativeconsumer.com
biopact.com
causerelatedmarketing.blogspot.com
eco-chick.com
ecofriend.org
ecogeek.com
ecorazzi.com
greenlivingideas.com
greenthinkers.org
gristmill.org
groovygreen.com
inhabitat.com
jetsongreen.com
lime.com
marketinggreen.wordpress.com
sustainablog.org
thegoodhuman.com
theoildrum.com
treehugger.com
worldchanging.com
A recent report from Nielsen Online ranked Tree Hugger, World Changing, The Oil Drum and Alternative Consumer among the most popular sustainability blogs on the web. And all are far from ragtag operations.
Motley crew
The sites boast a mix of activists, scholars and experts in topics as varied as green building, energy and nutrition. Some came to the cause early -- one of Alternative Consumer's bloggers is Zach McGrath, a high-school junior -- but others, such as Tree Hugger's Kenny Luna, turned green more recently in response to climatic events.
Tree Hugger is the largest of the environmental blogs, with 10 staffers and more than 50 regular contributors around the world. Its founder, Graham Hill, dabbled in fashion, viral e-mail and plant-based air filters, among other things, before launching the site in 2004. He's also the guy that designed the ceramic cup that looks like a paper cup and reads, "We are happy to serve you."
According to Ken Rother, president-chief operating officer, as one of the more influential green sites out there, Tree Hugger aims to take advertising that adds as much value to the site as the content. Advertisers include Wal-Mart, Simple Shoes, Envirolet composting toilets and a band, The Weepies.
Pitching in
But even a smaller organization, such as Alternative Consumer, has eight regular contributors. Founded in 2007 by Maureen O'Connor, a native New Yorker, the site takes more of a lifestyle approach to green topics. Recent posts highlight hemp skirts and outdoor furniture made from recycled milk jugs, detergent containers and the like. Advertising, meanwhile, runs the gamut from smaller green companies touting plastic-free diapers and eco-friendly dog sweaters to national brands such as GE, Sun Chips and Hush Puppies.
The nonprofit blog World Changing counts 150 contributors around the globe, with 25 regulars and five staff members. Its ranks include writers in Stockholm, Shanghai, Mumbai and Las Vegas, as well as one "Global Nomad." The Oil Drum, which carries only barebones Google ads, is slightly more mysterious. Its writers are largely anonymous and include "Prof. Goose," a professor in the social sciences, and "Heading Out," a faculty member in an energy production discipline.
-- Natalie Zmuda and Michael Bush
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http://news.aol.com/story/_a/even-funerals-are-going-green/20080420074309990001
Even Funerals Are Going Green
AP
LONDON (April 20)
It's no longer enough to live a greener life — now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too.
Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. See, e.g., http://www.stibbards.co.uk/ecocoffins.htm ; http://www.greenendings.co.uk/coffinsandurns.htm ;
"People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals.Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition.
Some may expect green funerals to be as cheap as a do-it-yourself project, while others might brace for price hikes similar to those fair trade food.
But, funeral directors say green funerals — like any — run the gamut.
"It's about choice, not price," said Fran Hall, marketing director for Epping Forest Burial Park.
For a concept aimed at saving the Earth by going back to basics, an eco-funeral can be more complicated than it sounds. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries.
"You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director.
In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system.
Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Coffins on display included one made from wicker and decorated with flowers.
One visitor, Linda McDowall, admired another coffin bundled in a beige, leaf-adorned felt shroud, saying it looked comfortable.
"Cozy and warm are not words you associate with death," said McDowall, a 48-year-old German and French translator.
Cardboard coffins — which are as thick as their wooden counterparts — can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months.
"The trouble is, they are a bit ungainly to use," said Oakfield Wood burial ground director Oliver Peacock. "They're not terribly easy to handle and if it's wet, they don't look their best either."
Particular care is taken in how coffins are buried at eco-friendly graveyards like Oakfield Wood, Peacock said.
The cemetery was a pasture when it opened in 1995. It is now speckled with more than 1,600 trees that mark plots along with a wooden plaque.
Marble tombstones are frowned upon. Jeremy Smite, a funeral director at Green Endings, notes that shipping and mining produce carbon and that marble is not a renewable resource.
For cremations — which account for 70 percent of British funerals — a person's ashes and the remains of the eco-friendly coffin are placed in bamboo, glass or ceramic urns.
New legislation in Britain requires reductions in the mercury content of plastics and treatments used in coffins starting in 2010. All biodegradable coffins meet the new standards.
Cassidy said small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions.
"What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.
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http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about/environz/environz-nov07/page10.html
Move over for Sustainable Product Design
(New Zealand Ministry for the Environment website)
November 2007
Sustainability is a driving force for product innovation and yes, it’s good for our environment, too.
Mortality is not something people like to dwellon every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin?
Mortality is not something people like to dwell on every day, but have you ever considered the environmental impacts of a coffin? Plastic, synthetic linings and glue containing formaldehyde are features in most New Zealand coffins. Now that more New Zealanders are becoming aware of their impact on the environment, the demand for natural burials and eco-friendly coffins is growing.
[WE SURMISE THAT ALL OF THAT ISOLATION & SHEEP FARMING IN OCEANIA MUST HAVE GOTTEN TO THESE KIWIS]
This is where the Return to Sender eco coffin, designed by Greg Holdsworth from Holdsworth Design, comes into play. It uses a minimum of materials which are also bio-degradable and non-toxic.
The interest in and uptake of the coffin are proof that its stylish, unique design appeals to a wide range of people, not just ‘green’ consumers. It is a great example of how good product design can go hand-in-hand with sustainable principles.
Designers are increasingly aware they have a responsibility to include sustainable principles into their work, says Cathy Veninga, Chief Executive Officer of Designers Institute of New Zealand.
“Ideally, products should be designed in such a way that consumers can rest assured the product of their choice is sustainably sound,” said Veninga.
With research showing that about 70 per cent of the environmental impacts of a product are determined at design stage, thinking about sustainability at the drawing board is an effective way to improve a product’s green credentials.
The Return to Sender eco coffin won a silver award for sustainable product design at the 2007 BeST Design Awards, supported by the Ministry. Formway Furniture struck gold, at the same awards, for their Met Adapt office furniture range.
However, the design world are not the only ones thinking sustainability at the drawing-board. Awareness is also gaining moment in the packaging industry.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Moral, Ethical & Religious Justification for the European Regulate, Tax & Spend Welfare State; Will Clinton & Obama Import This System to America?
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070830/COMMENTARY/108300003
Papal indulgence of OECD thugs
August 30, 2007
Walter E. Williams - London's Times Online recently reported that, according to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI is working on his second encyclical, a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as "socially unjust." (See www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2237625.ece ) The pontiff will denounce the use of tax havens and offshore banking by wealthy individuals because it reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole.
Pope Benedict could benefit from a bit of schooling. Tax avoidance is legal conduct whereby individuals arrange their affairs to reduce the amount of income that is taxable. Tax avoidance can run the gamut of legal acts, such as investing in tax-free bonds, having employer-paid health plans, making charitable gifts, quitting a job and banking in another country. Tax evasion refers to the conduct by individuals to reduce their tax obligation by illegal means. Tax evasion consists of illegal acts such as falsely claiming dependents, income underreporting and padding expenses.
Pope Benedict's second encyclical puts him squarely in company with a group of thugs known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international bureaucracy headquartered in Paris and comprised of 30 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. One OECD report said low-tax nations are bad for the world economy and named 35 jurisdictions as guilty of "harmful tax competition."
To the OECD, harmful tax competition occurs when a nation has taxes so low that saving and investment are lured away from high-taxed OECD countries. The countries they've identified as tax havens, having strong financial privacy laws and low or no taxes on certain activities, include Panama, the Bahamas, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands and Monaco.
The OECD demands these nations, as well as offshore financial centers in the Caribbean and the Pacific, in effect surrender their fiscal sovereignty and act as deputy tax collectors for nations like France and Germany. This would be a dream for politicians and bad news for the world's taxpayers. Fortunately, the hard work of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has stymied the OECD's proposed tax cartel.
Pope Benedict shares some of the OECD goals in its attack on low-tax jurisdictions. To support their welfare states, European nations must have high taxes. Government spending exceeds 50 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in France, Sweden, Germany and Italy.
If Europeans, as private c
itizens and businessmen, relocate, invest or save in other jurisdictions, it means less money is available to be taxed to support their welfare states.
The pope expresses the same concern in saying tax havens reduce revenues for the benefit of society as a whole. Survival of an ever-growing welfare state requires an assault on jurisdictional tax competition.
[See: Martin De Vlieghere, Paul Vreymans and Willy De Wit, "The Myth of the Scandinavian Model", The Brussels Journal (11/25/05) at: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/510 .]
[THIS IS A FALSE PRETENSE-BASED JUSTIFICATION FOR TRANSATLANTIC, AND EVEN GLOBAL REGULATORY AND TAX HARMONIZATION. THIS WAY, EUROPEAN INDUSTRIES IN HIGH-TAX JURISDICTIONS WILL NO LONGER BE AT A COMPETITIVE DISADVANTAGE. IT IS WHAT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES CLINTON & OBAMA REFER TO AS, 'LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD'.
IT IS ALSO WHAT UK PRIME MINISTER REFERRED TO IN HIS RECENT SPEECH AT THE JFK LIBRARY AS MORAL / ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR EACH NATIONS' CITIZENS BEING THEIR BROTHERS' KEEPER ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
BUT, NO MATTER HOW YOU DRESS IT UP (OR 'SEX IT UP', TO BORROW A PHRASE FROM FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR), EUROPEAN-STYLE REGULATION & TAXATION REGIMES REMAIN UNDESIRABLE. WHY THEN WOULD MADAME CLINTON AND MONSIEUR OBAMA BE DARING ENOUGH TO IMPOSE THEM HERE IN THE U.S.??]
There's a more fundamental question I would put to the pope: Should the Roman Catholic Church support the welfare state? Or, put more plainly, should the Church support using the coercive powers of government to enable one person to live at the expense of another? Put even more plainly, should the Church support the government taking one person's property and giving it to another to whom it doesn't belong? Such an act done privately is called theft.
The pope might say the welfare state reflects the will of the people. Would that mean the Church interprets God's commandment to Moses "Thou shalt not steal" as not an absolute, but as "Thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Parliament or Congress"?
I share Pope Benedict's desire to assist our fellow man in need. But I believe that reaching into one's own pocket to do so is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into another's pocket to assist one's fellow man in need is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist.
Papal indulgence of OECD thugs
August 30, 2007
Walter E. Williams - London's Times Online recently reported that, according to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI is working on his second encyclical, a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as "socially unjust." (See www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2237625.ece ) The pontiff will denounce the use of tax havens and offshore banking by wealthy individuals because it reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole.
Pope Benedict could benefit from a bit of schooling. Tax avoidance is legal conduct whereby individuals arrange their affairs to reduce the amount of income that is taxable. Tax avoidance can run the gamut of legal acts, such as investing in tax-free bonds, having employer-paid health plans, making charitable gifts, quitting a job and banking in another country. Tax evasion refers to the conduct by individuals to reduce their tax obligation by illegal means. Tax evasion consists of illegal acts such as falsely claiming dependents, income underreporting and padding expenses.
Pope Benedict's second encyclical puts him squarely in company with a group of thugs known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international bureaucracy headquartered in Paris and comprised of 30 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. One OECD report said low-tax nations are bad for the world economy and named 35 jurisdictions as guilty of "harmful tax competition."To the OECD, harmful tax competition occurs when a nation has taxes so low that saving and investment are lured away from high-taxed OECD countries. The countries they've identified as tax havens, having strong financial privacy laws and low or no taxes on certain activities, include Panama, the Bahamas, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands and Monaco.
The OECD demands these nations, as well as offshore financial centers in the Caribbean and the Pacific, in effect surrender their fiscal sovereignty and act as deputy tax collectors for nations like France and Germany. This would be a dream for politicians and bad news for the world's taxpayers. Fortunately, the hard work of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity has stymied the OECD's proposed tax cartel.
Pope Benedict shares some of the OECD goals in its attack on low-tax jurisdictions. To support their welfare states, European nations must have high taxes. Government spending exceeds 50 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in France, Sweden, Germany and Italy.
If Europeans, as private c
itizens and businessmen, relocate, invest or save in other jurisdictions, it means less money is available to be taxed to support their welfare states.The pope expresses the same concern in saying tax havens reduce revenues for the benefit of society as a whole. Survival of an ever-growing welfare state requires an assault on jurisdictional tax competition.
[See: Martin De Vlieghere, Paul Vreymans and Willy De Wit, "The Myth of the Scandinavian Model", The Brussels Journal (11/25/05) at: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/510 .]
[THIS IS A FALSE PRETENSE-BASED JUSTIFICATION FOR TRANSATLANTIC, AND EVEN GLOBAL REGULATORY AND TAX HARMONIZATION. THIS WAY, EUROPEAN INDUSTRIES IN HIGH-TAX JURISDICTIONS WILL NO LONGER BE AT A COMPETITIVE DISADVANTAGE. IT IS WHAT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES CLINTON & OBAMA REFER TO AS, 'LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD'.
IT IS ALSO WHAT UK PRIME MINISTER REFERRED TO IN HIS RECENT SPEECH AT THE JFK LIBRARY AS MORAL / ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR EACH NATIONS' CITIZENS BEING THEIR BROTHERS' KEEPER ALL AROUND THE WORLD.BUT, NO MATTER HOW YOU DRESS IT UP (OR 'SEX IT UP', TO BORROW A PHRASE FROM FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR), EUROPEAN-STYLE REGULATION & TAXATION REGIMES REMAIN UNDESIRABLE. WHY THEN WOULD MADAME CLINTON AND MONSIEUR OBAMA BE DARING ENOUGH TO IMPOSE THEM HERE IN THE U.S.??]
There's a more fundamental question I would put to the pope: Should the Roman Catholic Church support the welfare state? Or, put more plainly, should the Church support using the coercive powers of government to enable one person to live at the expense of another? Put even more plainly, should the Church support the government taking one person's property and giving it to another to whom it doesn't belong? Such an act done privately is called theft.
The pope might say the welfare state reflects the will of the people. Would that mean the Church interprets God's commandment to Moses "Thou shalt not steal" as not an absolute, but as "Thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Parliament or Congress"?
I share Pope Benedict's desire to assist our fellow man in need. But I believe that reaching into one's own pocket to do so is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into another's pocket to assist one's fellow man in need is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist.
Financial Times Columnist Predicts End to American Exceptionalism; Supports US Democratic Presidential Candidates' World View - Is US Really Like EU??
http://blogs.ft.com/crookblog/2008/04/the-end-of-the-american-exception
The end of the American exception
By Clive Crooks, FT's Washington columnist since April 2007
April 9, 2008
Here is a subject that preoccupies me at the moment. Europe continues, slowly and reluctantly, to deregulate its economies. In this it is following the US example. The American economy has some problems at the moment, but the EU’s governments are ever mindful of, and oppressed by, the long-term success of the American model. What is interesting is that the United States has been moving the other way.
If the Democrats control both the White House and
Congress next year, which seems very likely, America’s hitherto-gentle drift in Europe’s general direction will accelerate. One day, might the lines actually cross?
[European Socialist Party leader Rasmussen welcomes Britain's Prime Minister Brown at a meeting in Brussels ahead of a EU summit.
EU leaders members of European Socialist Party attend a meeting in Brussels ahead of a EU summit
This piece for The Atlantic takes a first stab at the question. I offer it as an introduction to the topic. I intend to return to it.
That the United States stands apart is something Americans and Europeans have agreed on for a long time. It goes back to Tocqueville, like most things. Many of the differences of character and culture he noted in the first half of the 19th century are still there, no doubt, but some more recent contrasts are looking questionable. Since 1945, American exceptionalism has been asserted with particular confidence—but gradually diminishing validity—in economic affairs.
America is to Europe as private enterprise is to the public good, as selfish individualism is to social partnership, as “compensation” is to work-life balance.
Modern America has limited government, weak unions, high-powered incentives, capitalism red in tooth and claw. Post-war Europe has tax-and-spend, transport strikes, six-week vacations, and the welfare state. Or so, on both sides of the Atlantic, we fondly imagine.
Living in the U.S. for several years after decades as a restless Brit, I continue to be struck by two things. First, this idea of rival economic paradigms appeals to both audiences: Neither would have it any other way. This may be why the notion persists so tenaciously, despite not being true. That is the second thing. Caricatures are well and good, but this one is just too much. In economic matters, America is far more like Europe, and Europe more like America, than either cares to admit. Moreover, the differences continue to shrink, and the pace of convergence seems about to accelerate. We will see whether the idea of America as the land of uncushioned capitalism—the timid and work-shy need not apply—will outlast a faster approach to the European norm.
[THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CANDIDATES SAY!!! HOW STRATEGIC, SYNERGISTIC & SELF-SERVING!! A MACHIEVELLIAN TOUR DE FORCE!!]
The Democrats’ promise of comprehensive health reform—something the country finally seems to want—is what prompts this line of thought. Over the past ten years, it seems, many Americans have come to think it wrong that a country as rich as theirs fails to guarantee access to health care. For much longer, almost all Europeans have thought it both incomprehensible and shameful. This is America’s biggest social-policy exception (unless you count capital punishment as social policy). And it is marked for abolition.
Universal health care, if it happens, will be an enormous change in its own right, of course, but also one with further implications. It is going to push taxes up—in the end, possibly way up. The plans lately under discussion have not been properly costed, but figures of $50 billion to $75 billion a year in extra spending—the sorts of numbers bruited for the Democrats’ proposals—are optimistic. Beyond the initial outlay, whatever that proves to be, is the likelihood that people will gradually migrate (at their own initiative, or more likely at their employers’) from private insurance schemes to the new (and presumably subsidized) public alternatives. Everything depends on how the system is managed, but it is easy to foresee, in the fullness of time, a far bigger increase in the cost to taxpayers than the current plans envisage. And if American health care coverage and financing get more European, American taxes will have to as well.
[THIS IS WHY FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON PREVIOUSLY CALLED UPON AMERICANS TO MAKE 'BIG' SACRIFICES!! BUT WHEN HE SPOKE OF MAJOR SACRIFICES, HE WAS ONLY SPEAKING ABOUT THOSE RELATING TO GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE!!! DOES THAT MEAN, AMERICANS WILL ALSO HAVE TO MAKE HUGE SACRIFICES TO AFFORD UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AS WELL????
See: Mr. Clinton, Please Explain: US Must Adopt Europe's Economically Harmful Malthusian Negative Sustainable Development Climate-Energy Policies??, at:
http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/02/clinton-american-should-adopt-europes.html ].
The rest of the article is here.
April 9th, 2008 in Current Affairs Permalink
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803u/no-american-exceptionalism
Economically speaking, America could soon be more European than Europe
The End of the American Exception
By Clive Crook
March 5, 2008
That the United States stands apart is something Americans and Europeans have agreed on for a long time. It goes back to Tocqueville, like most things. Many of the differences of character and culture he noted in the first half of the 19th century are still there, no doubt, but some more recent contrasts are looking questionable. Since 1945, American exceptionalism has been asserted with particular confidence—but gradually diminishing validity—in economic affairs.
America is to Europe as private enterprise is to the public good, as selfish individualism is to social partnership, as "compensation" is to work-life balance. Modern America has limited government, weak unions, high-powered incentives, capitalism red in tooth and claw. Post-war Europe has tax-and-spend, transport strikes, six-week vacations, and the welfare state. Or so, on both sides of the Atlantic, we fondly imagine.
Living in the U.S. for several years after decades as a restless Brit, I continue to be struck by two things. First, this idea of rival economic paradigms appeals to both audiences: Neither would have it any other way. This may be why the notion persists so tenaciously, despite not being true. That is the second thing. Caricatures are well and good, but this one is just too much. In economic matters, America is far more like Europe, and Europe more like America, than either cares to admit. Moreover, the differences continue to shrink, and the pace of convergence seems about to accelerate. We will see whether the idea of America as the land of uncushioned capitalism—the timid and work-shy need not apply—will outlast a faster approach to the European norm.
The Democrats' promise of comprehensive health reform—something the country finally seems to want—is what prompts this line of thought. Over the past ten years, it seems, many Americans have come to think it wrong that a country as rich as theirs fails to guarantee access to health care. For much longer, almost all Europeans have thought it both incomprehensible and shameful. This is America's biggest social-policy exception (unless you count capital punishment as social policy). And it is marked for abolition.
Universal health care, if it happens, will be an enormous change in its own right, of course, but also one with further implications. It is going to push taxes up—in the end, possibly way up. The plans lately under discussion have not been properly costed, but figures of $50 billion to $75 billion a year in extra spending—the sorts of numbers bruited for the Democrats' proposals—are optimistic. Beyond the initial outlay, whatever that proves to be, is the likelihood that people will gradually migrate (at their own initiative, or more likely at their employers') from private insurance schemes to the new (and presumably subsidized) public alternatives. Everything depends on how the system is managed, but it is easy to foresee, in the fullness of time, a far bigger increase in the cost to taxpayers than the current plans envisage. And if American health care coverage and financing get more European, American taxes will have to as well.
"Europe" is a gross simplification, so think about Britain—which continental Europe regards as a mid-Atlantic offshoot of the United States—and, say, the Netherlands. U.S. taxes are 27 percent of national income, British taxes are 37 percent, and the Netherlands' are 39 percent. Recall that America spends fully 10 percentage points of national income more than Britain on health care, public and private combined. Suppose the bulk of the existing costs of U.S. health care eventually migrated to the public sector, and nothing else changed, American taxes would have to approach or exceed British and Dutch levels.
That is a worst-case scenario, no doubt, for believers in "vive la différence" And health spending, however important, is still only one category of social spending. America will continue to spend less on other social programs than is usual in Europe, you might think. In fact, the differences are exaggerated. Roughly speaking, Britain and the Netherlands spend about 10 percentage points more of their national incomes on taxpayer-financed social spending. But if you allow for the higher taxes that Europeans pay on their benefits, and for cash-like tax reliefs that the United States freely uses to advance social goals, the difference shrinks by nearly half. This, to repeat, is before the Democrats have done their health reform. And it is before they have taken up any of their other proposals to improve the country's safety net, through more comprehensive trade adjustment assistance and other kinds of help for displaced workers, or to expand other social programs.
[DEAR MR. CLIVE, HOW MUCH OF THE DATA ARE YOU CITING IS ACCURATE? WE ALL KNOW ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND HOW NONTRANSPARENT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT CAN ACT. SO, HOW CAN WE TRUST THE NUMBERS YOU THROW OUT AS BEING RELIABLE?? ARE WE TO BELIEVE YOU, WHO ARE MORE OF AN EDITORIALIST THAN AN OSTENSIBLE JOURNALIST?? WE RECOGNIZE HOW THIS INFORMATION IS BEING USED AS PROPAGANDA TO PROMOTE GREATER TRANSATLANTIC REGULATORY-ECONOMIC HARMONIZATION!! THE MORE EUROPEAN POLITICIANS ARE ABLE TO PERSUADE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC THAT AMERICA AND EUROPE ARE QUITE SIMILAR, THE MORE READILY THEY WILL ACCEPT THE FATE THAT THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS IN STORE FOR THEM - INTEGRATION WITHIN THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK AT THE COST OF U.S. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY!! AND, WHAT BETTER WAY TO PROMOTE TRANSATLANTIC HARMONIZATION THAN TO ALIGN EUROPEAN INTERESTS WITH THOSE OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY DURING THIS MOST IMPORTANT OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS!! I SAY, GOOD SHOW!!]
If you look at other aspects of the American economic exception, you see something similar: Transatlantic differences have narrowed already, and the trend is more of the same. Consider regulation of business and finance. Few seem to question that the weight of regulation is less in the United States. In one area, anyway, this is true: Worker protections are weaker in America than in Western Europe, where employers are far less free to fire at will; and the floor that the minimum wage puts under incomes is lower here than there. But think about product-safety regulation, or environmental regulation. Think about the FDA. In many areas, America regulates its businesses at least as tightly as Europe.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did make a serious attempt to deregulate parts of the economy. Particular industries, notably banking and the airlines, were transformed. In other cases, such as the utilities, it was not so much a case of deregulating as replacing one scheme of regulation with another. But these were exceptions to an ongoing trend of regulatory accretion, and in some cases, accretion is putting it mildly. On regulation of corporate governance, Democrats are still calling for stricter rules—and given some of the recent abuses, not without reason. Yet, since Sarbanes Oxley, American financial and corporate regulation has been probably the most stringent and complex in the world. Personally, and I speak admittedly as a resident of the District of Columbia, I find the encompassing multi-jurisdictional tyranny of inspectors, officers, auditors, and issuers of licenses—petty bureaucracy in all its teeming proliferation—more oppressive in the United States than in Britain, something I never expected to say.
The unions are weaker here, it is said. To be sure, they have fewer members as a proportion of the workforce than in Britain, or (even more so) continental Europe. This is something else, of course, that the Democrats say they want to fix. Their proposed card-check legislation is expressly intended to slow and reverse the decline in union membership. This is a goal which few European governments would any longer think to embrace. In Britain it would be regarded as crazy, partly because Britain's unions, at the zenith of their power in the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher, were keen to confront not just employers but elected governments as well.
Qualitatively, if not quantitatively, American unions remind me of the old-fashioned British kind. They seem anachronistically angry and assertive. Reform education? Impossible: the teachers' unions will not hear of it. Barack Obama is called brave merely for uttering the words "merit pay" in their presence. See what America's unions have done to the auto industry. The Writers' Guild just shut Hollywood down for several months. I cannot think of a British union that any longer has that kind of muscle, or would think of exerting it if it did. In much of the rest of Europe, unions have become a quietly co-operative part of management more than militant champions of workers' rights.
It would be wrong to say that the European idea has "won." Attitudes, it seems to me, remain an ocean apart: America still salutes effort, ambition, self-reliance, and success in a way that is utterly unEuropean. And in recent years, remember, the distance between America and Europe has narrowed from both sides. Europe's governments have tried hard to cut taxes, spending, and regulation. They have had only modest success, it is true; nonetheless, there has been movement toward "American-style capitalism", as it is still called. In the United States, the movement has been the other way—and with Democrats expecting, plausibly, to add the presidency to their control of Congress next year, there is more to come.
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Could the lines even cross? Could America ever become more European than Europe? It seems unlikely, but not unthinkable. The Democrats, taken at their word (which would be rash), seem to be proposing exactly that. Elements, at least, of the programs outlined by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during their nomination contest are significantly to the left of where Britain's Labour Party, post-Thatcher, post-Blair, now stands. (Think about that.) But let us suppose, less adventurously, that American capitalism and Europe's social market merely continue to approach each other in the center. For good or ill, the era of the American economic exception is coming to an end.
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[THIS IS CLEARLY PROOF THAT THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA, ARE CARRYING THE FLAG, AMBITIONS AND HOPE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT - PERHAPS AMERICANS SHOULD CALL FOR A PUBLIC INVESTIGATION OF THE UNDUE POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN U.S. NATIONAL POLITICS. AFTER ALL, IT WAS PREVIOUSLY PROVEN THAT CHINA HAD TRIED TO INFLUENCE THE 1996 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS!!
See: "INVESTIGATION OF ILLEGAL OR IMPROPER ACTIVITIES IN CONNECTION WITH 1996 FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS FINAL REPORT of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, SENATE Rept. 105-167 - 105th Congress 2d Session - March 10, 1998, at: http://fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/4-1.htm ;
http://fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/index.html .]
10 Responses to “The end of the American exception”
Comments
1. I cannot help wondering if there is not something slightly outdated in Clive Crook’s implicit assumption that the world is divided between America and Europe, when Asia is clearly the fastest growing and most dynamic region of the world by any reasonable standard. Nor would it be surprising if, perhaps in another 5-10 years, if not even earlier, we start to see a tidal wave of books, articles, blogs, seminars, etc. on the growing economic clout of Africa, remote as that posibility may seem as we watch the newscasts of the contuing horrors in places like Zimbabwe, Somalia and Sudan, to name only a few.
Should not more FT columnists be preparing themselves for this to a much greater extent than they seem to be doing now?
Posted by: algasema April 9th, 2008 at 11:40 pm Report this comment
2. “possibility”, not “posibility”. My apologies once again.
Posted by: algasema April 9th, 2008 at 11:42 pm Report this comment
3. alg, Exactly. But your optimism on Africa is misplaced. Africa is an irredeemable basket case and will unfortunately always remain so.
Posted by: RCS April 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm Report this comment
4. RCS, ever since the time of Hegel, who famously wrote that Africa had no history, people in the west have been saying the same thing, in effect. I would agree that dictators like Mugabe are doing their best to ensure that as much of Africa as possible remains a basket case. However, given Africa’s oil and other resources, the fact that there is good, or at least improving, governance in places such as Ghana and Botswana, not to mention the functioning democracy in South Africa, imperfect though it may be (and how many examples are there of perfect democracies anywhere in the world?), and the fact that there is still a great deal that developed countries could do to give Africa greater access to their markets and reduce its burden of debt, I would hesitate to write off this whole continent.
Perhaps I am being too optimistic. But thirty years ago, most people thought that China was an incurable basket case. Going back fifty years, I remember taking a course about Southeast Asia as a Harvard undergraduate. The course was known as “Rice Paddies”.
I’m sure that these days, similar courses are probably known by entirely different names, such as possibly, “Computer Chips”? Of course, this could just be due to the rice shortage.
Posted by: algasema April 10th, 2008 at 2:58 pm Report this comment
5. Dear algasema,
I applaud your good-natured belief in humanity, but the ingredients of success include much more than an endowment of natural resources, or else Africa would have hit the road long ago. You cite the example of South Africa, but the fact remains that that country, founded by non-Africans, is now in decline.
Posted by: RCS April 10th, 2008 at 3:41 pm Report this comment
6. Dear Mr. Crook,
You seem to display the same inflated sense of ego and omniscience that most European Commission bureaucrats do, although you represent yourself as an objective journalist and ‘man of the people;, as well as, one who spent an ‘enlightened’ few years in America.
It appears as though you haven’t learned very much from that experience. Also, it would seem that you are too ready to concede the superior individual rights -based governance framework of the time-proven Anglo-sphere and the unrivaled US constitutional system. Do you honestly prefer the European continent-based paternalistic welfare state and the Napoleonic communalism which dictates what people can and cannot do?
Perhaps Britain and its citizenry are actually far weaker than they appear to be. How else to explain why nuanced tax & spend liberal Laborite Gordon Brown, who is ideologically in lockstep with Brussels bureaucrats, has been able to reneg on his public pledge and deny the British people a say over whether the UK accedes to the EU constitution/treaty? Why is Gordon Brown so eager to accede to kumbaya regionalism with Brussels based on the authoritarian/socialist proclivities of Berlin and Paris legislators/ regulators? Were Britain as strong and self-sufficient as it once was during the enlightened Thatcher era, this would never have been even a possiblility.
Sorry to say, contrary to your prognostications, American exceptionalism (individual rights-based federalism, checks and balances, due process of law, limited government and national sovereignty) will continue whether Europe likes it or not. As long as the EU and its member states continue to wield a 27-1 voting margin in international fora, the US will continue to refuse to play ‘UN’ ball. In fact, I would venture to say that the US might even play an obstructionist role in international affairs in order to preserve the unique constitutional precepts upon which it was founded (e.g., ‘negative’ exclusive private property rights as compared to Europe’s
‘positive’ property rights readily subject to public interest/ ‘public goods’ override), and thus, its national sovereignty.
One could even imagine certain circumstances under which the ‘BRIC’ nations of Brazil, India, China and Russia would be justified in considering NOT to surrender their national sovereignty to UN bodies, in order to stem the advance of top-down unaccountable UN global governance based on the EU regional model. This way, national and local constituencies (each nation’s citizenry) rather than some global/regional collective of arrogant but incompetent bureaucrats/philosopher kings) could be held to some modicum of constitutional due process and accountable framework of checks and balances. Without national sovereignty and federalism-based constitutionalism as a bulwark, international bureaucrats would be free to run amok and trample upon the individual rights of nations’ citizenry, especially those in constitutional representative democracies.
Lastly, as concerns your prediction about the likely result of the American presidential elections, if I were you, I would refrain from counting your chickens before they hatch. Madame Clinton’s ’solutions’ and Monsieur Obama’s
‘change’ policies, clearly harken from the European hinterlands (THERE IS NOT AN ORIGINAL POLICY IDEA BETWEEN THEM, INCLUDING UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE).
You are correct in intimating that the ideology of top-down governance, welfare state economics and communitarian thinking of the liberal wing of the US Democratic Party, which both candidates represent, is closer to that which now prevails in the socialist European Union than many people on both sides of the Atlantic recognize or are willing to admit. Were the Democrats to seize the White House in 2008 and to retain a majority in Congress (an abysmal thought if there ever was one), one thing is certain: There WILL be many more stringent draconian regulations of all flavors and textures adopted and much higher tax liabilities of all sizes and shapes imposed upon the working people of America, including union laborers, entrepreneurs and inventors - and upon the millions of America’s small businesses which have historically served as the backbone of American free enterprise, economic freedom, individualism, national independence and political and military strength.
Therefore, Americans should pay careful attention to what Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama say and don’t say during the present election cycle, because their words, gestures and intimations will likely affect their daily lives for the worse. Indeed, once Americans understand what these candidates truly stand for (the surrender of US sovereignty and constitutional rights to an unaccountable global collective), they are likely to vote with their hearts and minds at the polls. And, when they do, they will likely remember and/or relearn why the American Revolution occurred in the first place.
As my friend and mentor, Professor O. Lee Reed of the University of Georgia, has clearly articulated in his scholarship, “Historians of the colonial era are virtually unanimous in concluding that the American Revolution was fought over private property and the English refusal to apply to their own colonists the great constitutional principle of England: legitimate taxation of privately owned resources can derive only from the people’s elected representatives. Said John Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, during this time, ‘If we can tax the Americans without their consent, they have no property, nothing they can call their own.’”
With this in mind, I look forward to receiving your response.
Sincerely,
Informed Lawyer USA
Posted by: Informed Lawyer USA April 12th, 2008 at 6:47 pm Report this comment
7. A few comments in answer to “Informed Lawyer USA”. I am also a lawyer, and I can claim to be informed about a couple of things you have not mentioned in your comments. There is good reason to see the US as slipping into an almost third world income inequality, with 40 million Americans unable to afford health care, while a small elite at the top take home hundred million dollar bonuses for running their companies into the ground, and up to 2 million subprime mortgage holders are in danger of losing their homes because of predatory lending (followed by “securitization”) amounting to almost Enron-like fraud.
The Iraq war, which was entered into on false pretenses, as now almost everyone admits, has been a trillion dollar boondoggle (according to Steiglitz, who, I am willing to bet, knows a good deal more about economics than either of us) in which elite defense contractors and oil company barons have made billions while ordinary Americans (and Iraqi civilians) die.
As our country slides into bankruptcy and the dollar becomes worthless because of deficits resulting from the huge Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the wealthiest (with minute tax cuts for the rest) our democracy is rapidly disappearing, as torture is on the rise and due process erodes. America is not yet like Zimbabwe in fact, but the theory of our supposed democracy (and economy) is not much different. Europe may have its faults. But it is doing a better job of taking care of its citizens (and, for the most part, immigrants as well) and preserving its freedoms than we are doing over here on our side of the Atlantic. And your “free market” ideology is nothing more than a meaningless slogan, intended solely to preserve the privileges of the rich, as we saw most recently from the Bear Sterns bailout.
Posted by: algasema April 13th, 2008 at 5:12 pm Report this comment
8. A clarification on my above comment concerning “Enron like fraud”: I do not have specific information concerning subprime fraud convictions or dispositions relating to any specific lender, nor do I mean to imply this. However, it is a well known fact that the FBI and the SEC have been investigating the lending industry for subprime related fraud, as mentioned in a Financial Times article dated August 8, 2007.
Therefore, using this word is, in my opinion, not out of bounds. Unless my recollection is mistaken, I believe that Martin Wolf also used this term in a recent article on this topic. So did Alan Greenspan in his FT article of last week, though merely as a possibility, not a definite conclusion. My use of this word in connection with subprime lending has the same intention. It would be very hard to imagine that there could have been so many subprime loans issued on such harsh terms to people clearly unable to pay the sky-high “adjustable” interest rates, nor would so many institutions have bought worthless securities backed up by these mortgages, without conduct by the lenders which, if not actually fraudulent as a matter of law, can reasonably be assumed to have come as close to the line as possible.
Posted by: algasema April 13th, 2008 at 9:47 pm Report this comment
9. RCS,
can you name me an African ‘country’ that was NOT founded by non-Africans?
We all have our responsibilities and our parts to play in ensuring that Africa does not remain a ‘basket case’ (which is in itself a distortion of a much more complex situation)…
Posted by: David April 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm Report this comment
10. Dear Algasema,
You seem so emotionally distraught over these issues that I promise to refrain from using loaded political terminology and from making legal accusations that are NOT factually based.
You see, my statements are based on fact (I can present much documentary evidence) concerning high-cost and non-science-based Euro-over-regulation creep within America. I can also provide documentary evidence which clearly points to which one of the two main US political parties embraces the moribund welfare-stated-based European Dream and along with it, the Euro-regulatory creep, especially as concerns the environment, universal healthcare and notions of weaker private property rights, including IP, which can be more readily overriden by claims of ‘public interests’.
So, when I state that I can prove that policies favored by Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama who glowingly speak of their European ‘friends’, I CAN, IN FACT, trace them directly to Europe, and even to particular EU member states.
Can you back up your assertions similarly?? I strongly doubt it!!
What Americans need to do, is ask Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama about how they will grow American government through exhorbitant welfare-like ’spending’ programs modeled after those in Europe and other socialist governments around the world (e.g., Brazil). Americans should also ask these candidates about how they will call for the imposition of layer upon layer of new opaque high cost regulations (e.g., carbon dioxide cap and trade) and all kinds of new taxes on economic activity, based on a strong notion of ‘public interest’ to correct the wrongs of the marketplace which have ‘endangered’ public health and the environment of the planet.
Oh, I almost forgot. The policy positions of Madame Clinton, Monsieur Obama and their US Senate colleagues (e.g., Sen. Leahy) also seem to favor the weakening of US intellectual property rights which are presently the envy of the world, namely patents and trade secrets. Can you demonstrate how their policies will NOT impair America’s ability to invent and innovate and generate small business investment in new technologies during this 21st knowledge-based century?
Interestingly, the stance of Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama on patents, technology transfer and international trade seems to resemble and dovetail with that of the European Commission! Whoaa!!! Unfortunately the unions in the US only see this in connection with the current patent reform debate; they do not yet see how blocking bilateral trade agreements with Colombia, Korea, etc. on the grounds that there are relatively weaker labor and labor laws in these countries, has no impact on the US government’s ability to preserve jobs here in America! But give them some time to see through the campaign rhetoric.
American unions already realize that (they are NOT the ‘Joe six-pack’ chumps these candidates take them for), if US patents are weakened and compulsory licenses which can diminish patent rights can be issued by the US government at less than fmv, as Senator Leahy has sought to do in his prior bill (The Life-Saving Medicines Export Act Of 2006), based on the pretense of preserving an ‘important public interest’ (e.g., to improve America’s image abroad), then the chance of union members, once retrained, to capitalize from becoming garage inventors themselves - i.e., to reap the pecuniary rewards of temporary but exclusive market-based patent royalties for the time, discovery efforts and monies they have expended, will ultimately vanish.
You see, patent rights will become effectively weakened if patent infringement damage awards are limited as a matter of statute. Foreign competitors would be provided the wrong signal and would be encouraged to infringe upon US technologies and products containing them, knowing what the maximum all-out cost of a damage award could yield. Such arbitrage would also occur among compulsory license-loving centrally-planned foreign governments enamored of the ‘public interest’.
Can you provide evidence that candidates Clinton and Obama won’t pursue any of these ‘changes’? That foreign governments and foreign competitors won’t engage in patent infringement arbitrage at the market and government levels???
The public and I welcome your response.
Once the facts get out that candidates Clinton and Obama will give away American constitutional sovereignty, cutting-edge technologies, private property rights and yet-as-known sources of new 21st century American jobs, as a gesture of foreign policy - international charity and solidarity - and for the sake of ‘improving America’s ‘tattered’ image abroad’, these candidates will need to answer to the public. Only the American people, through transparent and open public debate, can sanction such initiatives. Do you not agree?
All the Best,
Informed Lawyer USA
Posted by: Informed Lawyer USA April 17th, 2008 at 7:50 pm Report this co
The end of the American exception
By Clive Crooks, FT's Washington columnist since April 2007
April 9, 2008
Here is a subject that preoccupies me at the moment. Europe continues, slowly and reluctantly, to deregulate its economies. In this it is following the US example. The American economy has some problems at the moment, but the EU’s governments are ever mindful of, and oppressed by, the long-term success of the American model. What is interesting is that the United States has been moving the other way.
If the Democrats control both the White House and Congress next year, which seems very likely, America’s hitherto-gentle drift in Europe’s general direction will accelerate. One day, might the lines actually cross?[European Socialist Party leader Rasmussen welcomes Britain's Prime Minister Brown at a meeting in Brussels ahead of a EU summit.EU leaders members of European Socialist Party attend a meeting in Brussels ahead of a EU summitThis piece for The Atlantic takes a first stab at the question. I offer it as an introduction to the topic. I intend to return to it.
That the United States stands apart is something Americans and Europeans have agreed on for a long time. It goes back to Tocqueville, like most things. Many of the differences of character and culture he noted in the first half of the 19th century are still there, no doubt, but some more recent contrasts are looking questionable. Since 1945, American exceptionalism has been asserted with particular confidence—but gradually diminishing validity—in economic affairs.
America is to Europe as private enterprise is to the public good, as selfish individualism is to social partnership, as “compensation” is to work-life balance.
Modern America has limited government, weak unions, high-powered incentives, capitalism red in tooth and claw. Post-war Europe has tax-and-spend, transport strikes, six-week vacations, and the welfare state. Or so, on both sides of the Atlantic, we fondly imagine.
Living in the U.S. for several years after decades as a restless Brit, I continue to be struck by two things. First, this idea of rival economic paradigms appeals to both audiences: Neither would have it any other way. This may be why the notion persists so tenaciously, despite not being true. That is the second thing. Caricatures are well and good, but this one is just too much. In economic matters, America is far more like Europe, and Europe more like America, than either cares to admit. Moreover, the differences continue to shrink, and the pace of convergence seems about to accelerate. We will see whether the idea of America as the land of uncushioned capitalism—the timid and work-shy need not apply—will outlast a faster approach to the European norm.
[THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CANDIDATES SAY!!! HOW STRATEGIC, SYNERGISTIC & SELF-SERVING!! A MACHIEVELLIAN TOUR DE FORCE!!]
The Democrats’ promise of comprehensive health reform—something the country finally seems to want—is what prompts this line of thought. Over the past ten years, it seems, many Americans have come to think it wrong that a country as rich as theirs fails to guarantee access to health care. For much longer, almost all Europeans have thought it both incomprehensible and shameful. This is America’s biggest social-policy exception (unless you count capital punishment as social policy). And it is marked for abolition.
Universal health care, if it happens, will be an enormous change in its own right, of course, but also one with further implications. It is going to push taxes up—in the end, possibly way up. The plans lately under discussion have not been properly costed, but figures of $50 billion to $75 billion a year in extra spending—the sorts of numbers bruited for the Democrats’ proposals—are optimistic. Beyond the initial outlay, whatever that proves to be, is the likelihood that people will gradually migrate (at their own initiative, or more likely at their employers’) from private insurance schemes to the new (and presumably subsidized) public alternatives. Everything depends on how the system is managed, but it is easy to foresee, in the fullness of time, a far bigger increase in the cost to taxpayers than the current plans envisage. And if American health care coverage and financing get more European, American taxes will have to as well.
[THIS IS WHY FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON PREVIOUSLY CALLED UPON AMERICANS TO MAKE 'BIG' SACRIFICES!! BUT WHEN HE SPOKE OF MAJOR SACRIFICES, HE WAS ONLY SPEAKING ABOUT THOSE RELATING TO GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE!!! DOES THAT MEAN, AMERICANS WILL ALSO HAVE TO MAKE HUGE SACRIFICES TO AFFORD UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AS WELL????
See: Mr. Clinton, Please Explain: US Must Adopt Europe's Economically Harmful Malthusian Negative Sustainable Development Climate-Energy Policies??, at:
http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/02/clinton-american-should-adopt-europes.html ].
The rest of the article is here.
April 9th, 2008 in Current Affairs Permalink
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http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803u/no-american-exceptionalism
Economically speaking, America could soon be more European than Europe
The End of the American Exception
By Clive Crook
March 5, 2008
That the United States stands apart is something Americans and Europeans have agreed on for a long time. It goes back to Tocqueville, like most things. Many of the differences of character and culture he noted in the first half of the 19th century are still there, no doubt, but some more recent contrasts are looking questionable. Since 1945, American exceptionalism has been asserted with particular confidence—but gradually diminishing validity—in economic affairs.
America is to Europe as private enterprise is to the public good, as selfish individualism is to social partnership, as "compensation" is to work-life balance. Modern America has limited government, weak unions, high-powered incentives, capitalism red in tooth and claw. Post-war Europe has tax-and-spend, transport strikes, six-week vacations, and the welfare state. Or so, on both sides of the Atlantic, we fondly imagine.
Living in the U.S. for several years after decades as a restless Brit, I continue to be struck by two things. First, this idea of rival economic paradigms appeals to both audiences: Neither would have it any other way. This may be why the notion persists so tenaciously, despite not being true. That is the second thing. Caricatures are well and good, but this one is just too much. In economic matters, America is far more like Europe, and Europe more like America, than either cares to admit. Moreover, the differences continue to shrink, and the pace of convergence seems about to accelerate. We will see whether the idea of America as the land of uncushioned capitalism—the timid and work-shy need not apply—will outlast a faster approach to the European norm.
The Democrats' promise of comprehensive health reform—something the country finally seems to want—is what prompts this line of thought. Over the past ten years, it seems, many Americans have come to think it wrong that a country as rich as theirs fails to guarantee access to health care. For much longer, almost all Europeans have thought it both incomprehensible and shameful. This is America's biggest social-policy exception (unless you count capital punishment as social policy). And it is marked for abolition.
Universal health care, if it happens, will be an enormous change in its own right, of course, but also one with further implications. It is going to push taxes up—in the end, possibly way up. The plans lately under discussion have not been properly costed, but figures of $50 billion to $75 billion a year in extra spending—the sorts of numbers bruited for the Democrats' proposals—are optimistic. Beyond the initial outlay, whatever that proves to be, is the likelihood that people will gradually migrate (at their own initiative, or more likely at their employers') from private insurance schemes to the new (and presumably subsidized) public alternatives. Everything depends on how the system is managed, but it is easy to foresee, in the fullness of time, a far bigger increase in the cost to taxpayers than the current plans envisage. And if American health care coverage and financing get more European, American taxes will have to as well.
"Europe" is a gross simplification, so think about Britain—which continental Europe regards as a mid-Atlantic offshoot of the United States—and, say, the Netherlands. U.S. taxes are 27 percent of national income, British taxes are 37 percent, and the Netherlands' are 39 percent. Recall that America spends fully 10 percentage points of national income more than Britain on health care, public and private combined. Suppose the bulk of the existing costs of U.S. health care eventually migrated to the public sector, and nothing else changed, American taxes would have to approach or exceed British and Dutch levels.
That is a worst-case scenario, no doubt, for believers in "vive la différence" And health spending, however important, is still only one category of social spending. America will continue to spend less on other social programs than is usual in Europe, you might think. In fact, the differences are exaggerated. Roughly speaking, Britain and the Netherlands spend about 10 percentage points more of their national incomes on taxpayer-financed social spending. But if you allow for the higher taxes that Europeans pay on their benefits, and for cash-like tax reliefs that the United States freely uses to advance social goals, the difference shrinks by nearly half. This, to repeat, is before the Democrats have done their health reform. And it is before they have taken up any of their other proposals to improve the country's safety net, through more comprehensive trade adjustment assistance and other kinds of help for displaced workers, or to expand other social programs.
[DEAR MR. CLIVE, HOW MUCH OF THE DATA ARE YOU CITING IS ACCURATE? WE ALL KNOW ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND HOW NONTRANSPARENT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT CAN ACT. SO, HOW CAN WE TRUST THE NUMBERS YOU THROW OUT AS BEING RELIABLE?? ARE WE TO BELIEVE YOU, WHO ARE MORE OF AN EDITORIALIST THAN AN OSTENSIBLE JOURNALIST?? WE RECOGNIZE HOW THIS INFORMATION IS BEING USED AS PROPAGANDA TO PROMOTE GREATER TRANSATLANTIC REGULATORY-ECONOMIC HARMONIZATION!! THE MORE EUROPEAN POLITICIANS ARE ABLE TO PERSUADE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC THAT AMERICA AND EUROPE ARE QUITE SIMILAR, THE MORE READILY THEY WILL ACCEPT THE FATE THAT THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS IN STORE FOR THEM - INTEGRATION WITHIN THE UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK AT THE COST OF U.S. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY!! AND, WHAT BETTER WAY TO PROMOTE TRANSATLANTIC HARMONIZATION THAN TO ALIGN EUROPEAN INTERESTS WITH THOSE OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY DURING THIS MOST IMPORTANT OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS!! I SAY, GOOD SHOW!!]
If you look at other aspects of the American economic exception, you see something similar: Transatlantic differences have narrowed already, and the trend is more of the same. Consider regulation of business and finance. Few seem to question that the weight of regulation is less in the United States. In one area, anyway, this is true: Worker protections are weaker in America than in Western Europe, where employers are far less free to fire at will; and the floor that the minimum wage puts under incomes is lower here than there. But think about product-safety regulation, or environmental regulation. Think about the FDA. In many areas, America regulates its businesses at least as tightly as Europe.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did make a serious attempt to deregulate parts of the economy. Particular industries, notably banking and the airlines, were transformed. In other cases, such as the utilities, it was not so much a case of deregulating as replacing one scheme of regulation with another. But these were exceptions to an ongoing trend of regulatory accretion, and in some cases, accretion is putting it mildly. On regulation of corporate governance, Democrats are still calling for stricter rules—and given some of the recent abuses, not without reason. Yet, since Sarbanes Oxley, American financial and corporate regulation has been probably the most stringent and complex in the world. Personally, and I speak admittedly as a resident of the District of Columbia, I find the encompassing multi-jurisdictional tyranny of inspectors, officers, auditors, and issuers of licenses—petty bureaucracy in all its teeming proliferation—more oppressive in the United States than in Britain, something I never expected to say.
The unions are weaker here, it is said. To be sure, they have fewer members as a proportion of the workforce than in Britain, or (even more so) continental Europe. This is something else, of course, that the Democrats say they want to fix. Their proposed card-check legislation is expressly intended to slow and reverse the decline in union membership. This is a goal which few European governments would any longer think to embrace. In Britain it would be regarded as crazy, partly because Britain's unions, at the zenith of their power in the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher, were keen to confront not just employers but elected governments as well.
Qualitatively, if not quantitatively, American unions remind me of the old-fashioned British kind. They seem anachronistically angry and assertive. Reform education? Impossible: the teachers' unions will not hear of it. Barack Obama is called brave merely for uttering the words "merit pay" in their presence. See what America's unions have done to the auto industry. The Writers' Guild just shut Hollywood down for several months. I cannot think of a British union that any longer has that kind of muscle, or would think of exerting it if it did. In much of the rest of Europe, unions have become a quietly co-operative part of management more than militant champions of workers' rights.
It would be wrong to say that the European idea has "won." Attitudes, it seems to me, remain an ocean apart: America still salutes effort, ambition, self-reliance, and success in a way that is utterly unEuropean. And in recent years, remember, the distance between America and Europe has narrowed from both sides. Europe's governments have tried hard to cut taxes, spending, and regulation. They have had only modest success, it is true; nonetheless, there has been movement toward "American-style capitalism", as it is still called. In the United States, the movement has been the other way—and with Democrats expecting, plausibly, to add the presidency to their control of Congress next year, there is more to come.
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Could the lines even cross? Could America ever become more European than Europe? It seems unlikely, but not unthinkable. The Democrats, taken at their word (which would be rash), seem to be proposing exactly that. Elements, at least, of the programs outlined by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during their nomination contest are significantly to the left of where Britain's Labour Party, post-Thatcher, post-Blair, now stands. (Think about that.) But let us suppose, less adventurously, that American capitalism and Europe's social market merely continue to approach each other in the center. For good or ill, the era of the American economic exception is coming to an end.
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[THIS IS CLEARLY PROOF THAT THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, MADAME CLINTON & MONSIEUR OBAMA, ARE CARRYING THE FLAG, AMBITIONS AND HOPE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT - PERHAPS AMERICANS SHOULD CALL FOR A PUBLIC INVESTIGATION OF THE UNDUE POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN U.S. NATIONAL POLITICS. AFTER ALL, IT WAS PREVIOUSLY PROVEN THAT CHINA HAD TRIED TO INFLUENCE THE 1996 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS!!
See: "INVESTIGATION OF ILLEGAL OR IMPROPER ACTIVITIES IN CONNECTION WITH 1996 FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS FINAL REPORT of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, SENATE Rept. 105-167 - 105th Congress 2d Session - March 10, 1998, at: http://fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/4-1.htm ;
http://fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/index.html .]
10 Responses to “The end of the American exception”
Comments
1. I cannot help wondering if there is not something slightly outdated in Clive Crook’s implicit assumption that the world is divided between America and Europe, when Asia is clearly the fastest growing and most dynamic region of the world by any reasonable standard. Nor would it be surprising if, perhaps in another 5-10 years, if not even earlier, we start to see a tidal wave of books, articles, blogs, seminars, etc. on the growing economic clout of Africa, remote as that posibility may seem as we watch the newscasts of the contuing horrors in places like Zimbabwe, Somalia and Sudan, to name only a few.
Should not more FT columnists be preparing themselves for this to a much greater extent than they seem to be doing now?
Posted by: algasema April 9th, 2008 at 11:40 pm Report this comment
2. “possibility”, not “posibility”. My apologies once again.
Posted by: algasema April 9th, 2008 at 11:42 pm Report this comment
3. alg, Exactly. But your optimism on Africa is misplaced. Africa is an irredeemable basket case and will unfortunately always remain so.
Posted by: RCS April 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm Report this comment
4. RCS, ever since the time of Hegel, who famously wrote that Africa had no history, people in the west have been saying the same thing, in effect. I would agree that dictators like Mugabe are doing their best to ensure that as much of Africa as possible remains a basket case. However, given Africa’s oil and other resources, the fact that there is good, or at least improving, governance in places such as Ghana and Botswana, not to mention the functioning democracy in South Africa, imperfect though it may be (and how many examples are there of perfect democracies anywhere in the world?), and the fact that there is still a great deal that developed countries could do to give Africa greater access to their markets and reduce its burden of debt, I would hesitate to write off this whole continent.
Perhaps I am being too optimistic. But thirty years ago, most people thought that China was an incurable basket case. Going back fifty years, I remember taking a course about Southeast Asia as a Harvard undergraduate. The course was known as “Rice Paddies”.
I’m sure that these days, similar courses are probably known by entirely different names, such as possibly, “Computer Chips”? Of course, this could just be due to the rice shortage.
Posted by: algasema April 10th, 2008 at 2:58 pm Report this comment
5. Dear algasema,
I applaud your good-natured belief in humanity, but the ingredients of success include much more than an endowment of natural resources, or else Africa would have hit the road long ago. You cite the example of South Africa, but the fact remains that that country, founded by non-Africans, is now in decline.
Posted by: RCS April 10th, 2008 at 3:41 pm Report this comment
6. Dear Mr. Crook,
You seem to display the same inflated sense of ego and omniscience that most European Commission bureaucrats do, although you represent yourself as an objective journalist and ‘man of the people;, as well as, one who spent an ‘enlightened’ few years in America.
It appears as though you haven’t learned very much from that experience. Also, it would seem that you are too ready to concede the superior individual rights -based governance framework of the time-proven Anglo-sphere and the unrivaled US constitutional system. Do you honestly prefer the European continent-based paternalistic welfare state and the Napoleonic communalism which dictates what people can and cannot do?
Perhaps Britain and its citizenry are actually far weaker than they appear to be. How else to explain why nuanced tax & spend liberal Laborite Gordon Brown, who is ideologically in lockstep with Brussels bureaucrats, has been able to reneg on his public pledge and deny the British people a say over whether the UK accedes to the EU constitution/treaty? Why is Gordon Brown so eager to accede to kumbaya regionalism with Brussels based on the authoritarian/socialist proclivities of Berlin and Paris legislators/ regulators? Were Britain as strong and self-sufficient as it once was during the enlightened Thatcher era, this would never have been even a possiblility.
Sorry to say, contrary to your prognostications, American exceptionalism (individual rights-based federalism, checks and balances, due process of law, limited government and national sovereignty) will continue whether Europe likes it or not. As long as the EU and its member states continue to wield a 27-1 voting margin in international fora, the US will continue to refuse to play ‘UN’ ball. In fact, I would venture to say that the US might even play an obstructionist role in international affairs in order to preserve the unique constitutional precepts upon which it was founded (e.g., ‘negative’ exclusive private property rights as compared to Europe’s
‘positive’ property rights readily subject to public interest/ ‘public goods’ override), and thus, its national sovereignty.
One could even imagine certain circumstances under which the ‘BRIC’ nations of Brazil, India, China and Russia would be justified in considering NOT to surrender their national sovereignty to UN bodies, in order to stem the advance of top-down unaccountable UN global governance based on the EU regional model. This way, national and local constituencies (each nation’s citizenry) rather than some global/regional collective of arrogant but incompetent bureaucrats/philosopher kings) could be held to some modicum of constitutional due process and accountable framework of checks and balances. Without national sovereignty and federalism-based constitutionalism as a bulwark, international bureaucrats would be free to run amok and trample upon the individual rights of nations’ citizenry, especially those in constitutional representative democracies.
Lastly, as concerns your prediction about the likely result of the American presidential elections, if I were you, I would refrain from counting your chickens before they hatch. Madame Clinton’s ’solutions’ and Monsieur Obama’s
‘change’ policies, clearly harken from the European hinterlands (THERE IS NOT AN ORIGINAL POLICY IDEA BETWEEN THEM, INCLUDING UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE).
You are correct in intimating that the ideology of top-down governance, welfare state economics and communitarian thinking of the liberal wing of the US Democratic Party, which both candidates represent, is closer to that which now prevails in the socialist European Union than many people on both sides of the Atlantic recognize or are willing to admit. Were the Democrats to seize the White House in 2008 and to retain a majority in Congress (an abysmal thought if there ever was one), one thing is certain: There WILL be many more stringent draconian regulations of all flavors and textures adopted and much higher tax liabilities of all sizes and shapes imposed upon the working people of America, including union laborers, entrepreneurs and inventors - and upon the millions of America’s small businesses which have historically served as the backbone of American free enterprise, economic freedom, individualism, national independence and political and military strength.
Therefore, Americans should pay careful attention to what Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama say and don’t say during the present election cycle, because their words, gestures and intimations will likely affect their daily lives for the worse. Indeed, once Americans understand what these candidates truly stand for (the surrender of US sovereignty and constitutional rights to an unaccountable global collective), they are likely to vote with their hearts and minds at the polls. And, when they do, they will likely remember and/or relearn why the American Revolution occurred in the first place.
As my friend and mentor, Professor O. Lee Reed of the University of Georgia, has clearly articulated in his scholarship, “Historians of the colonial era are virtually unanimous in concluding that the American Revolution was fought over private property and the English refusal to apply to their own colonists the great constitutional principle of England: legitimate taxation of privately owned resources can derive only from the people’s elected representatives. Said John Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, during this time, ‘If we can tax the Americans without their consent, they have no property, nothing they can call their own.’”
With this in mind, I look forward to receiving your response.
Sincerely,
Informed Lawyer USA
Posted by: Informed Lawyer USA April 12th, 2008 at 6:47 pm Report this comment
7. A few comments in answer to “Informed Lawyer USA”. I am also a lawyer, and I can claim to be informed about a couple of things you have not mentioned in your comments. There is good reason to see the US as slipping into an almost third world income inequality, with 40 million Americans unable to afford health care, while a small elite at the top take home hundred million dollar bonuses for running their companies into the ground, and up to 2 million subprime mortgage holders are in danger of losing their homes because of predatory lending (followed by “securitization”) amounting to almost Enron-like fraud.
The Iraq war, which was entered into on false pretenses, as now almost everyone admits, has been a trillion dollar boondoggle (according to Steiglitz, who, I am willing to bet, knows a good deal more about economics than either of us) in which elite defense contractors and oil company barons have made billions while ordinary Americans (and Iraqi civilians) die.
As our country slides into bankruptcy and the dollar becomes worthless because of deficits resulting from the huge Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the wealthiest (with minute tax cuts for the rest) our democracy is rapidly disappearing, as torture is on the rise and due process erodes. America is not yet like Zimbabwe in fact, but the theory of our supposed democracy (and economy) is not much different. Europe may have its faults. But it is doing a better job of taking care of its citizens (and, for the most part, immigrants as well) and preserving its freedoms than we are doing over here on our side of the Atlantic. And your “free market” ideology is nothing more than a meaningless slogan, intended solely to preserve the privileges of the rich, as we saw most recently from the Bear Sterns bailout.
Posted by: algasema April 13th, 2008 at 5:12 pm Report this comment
8. A clarification on my above comment concerning “Enron like fraud”: I do not have specific information concerning subprime fraud convictions or dispositions relating to any specific lender, nor do I mean to imply this. However, it is a well known fact that the FBI and the SEC have been investigating the lending industry for subprime related fraud, as mentioned in a Financial Times article dated August 8, 2007.
Therefore, using this word is, in my opinion, not out of bounds. Unless my recollection is mistaken, I believe that Martin Wolf also used this term in a recent article on this topic. So did Alan Greenspan in his FT article of last week, though merely as a possibility, not a definite conclusion. My use of this word in connection with subprime lending has the same intention. It would be very hard to imagine that there could have been so many subprime loans issued on such harsh terms to people clearly unable to pay the sky-high “adjustable” interest rates, nor would so many institutions have bought worthless securities backed up by these mortgages, without conduct by the lenders which, if not actually fraudulent as a matter of law, can reasonably be assumed to have come as close to the line as possible.
Posted by: algasema April 13th, 2008 at 9:47 pm Report this comment
9. RCS,
can you name me an African ‘country’ that was NOT founded by non-Africans?
We all have our responsibilities and our parts to play in ensuring that Africa does not remain a ‘basket case’ (which is in itself a distortion of a much more complex situation)…
Posted by: David April 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm Report this comment
10. Dear Algasema,
You seem so emotionally distraught over these issues that I promise to refrain from using loaded political terminology and from making legal accusations that are NOT factually based.
You see, my statements are based on fact (I can present much documentary evidence) concerning high-cost and non-science-based Euro-over-regulation creep within America. I can also provide documentary evidence which clearly points to which one of the two main US political parties embraces the moribund welfare-stated-based European Dream and along with it, the Euro-regulatory creep, especially as concerns the environment, universal healthcare and notions of weaker private property rights, including IP, which can be more readily overriden by claims of ‘public interests’.
So, when I state that I can prove that policies favored by Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama who glowingly speak of their European ‘friends’, I CAN, IN FACT, trace them directly to Europe, and even to particular EU member states.
Can you back up your assertions similarly?? I strongly doubt it!!
What Americans need to do, is ask Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama about how they will grow American government through exhorbitant welfare-like ’spending’ programs modeled after those in Europe and other socialist governments around the world (e.g., Brazil). Americans should also ask these candidates about how they will call for the imposition of layer upon layer of new opaque high cost regulations (e.g., carbon dioxide cap and trade) and all kinds of new taxes on economic activity, based on a strong notion of ‘public interest’ to correct the wrongs of the marketplace which have ‘endangered’ public health and the environment of the planet.
Oh, I almost forgot. The policy positions of Madame Clinton, Monsieur Obama and their US Senate colleagues (e.g., Sen. Leahy) also seem to favor the weakening of US intellectual property rights which are presently the envy of the world, namely patents and trade secrets. Can you demonstrate how their policies will NOT impair America’s ability to invent and innovate and generate small business investment in new technologies during this 21st knowledge-based century?
Interestingly, the stance of Madame Clinton and Monsieur Obama on patents, technology transfer and international trade seems to resemble and dovetail with that of the European Commission! Whoaa!!! Unfortunately the unions in the US only see this in connection with the current patent reform debate; they do not yet see how blocking bilateral trade agreements with Colombia, Korea, etc. on the grounds that there are relatively weaker labor and labor laws in these countries, has no impact on the US government’s ability to preserve jobs here in America! But give them some time to see through the campaign rhetoric.
American unions already realize that (they are NOT the ‘Joe six-pack’ chumps these candidates take them for), if US patents are weakened and compulsory licenses which can diminish patent rights can be issued by the US government at less than fmv, as Senator Leahy has sought to do in his prior bill (The Life-Saving Medicines Export Act Of 2006), based on the pretense of preserving an ‘important public interest’ (e.g., to improve America’s image abroad), then the chance of union members, once retrained, to capitalize from becoming garage inventors themselves - i.e., to reap the pecuniary rewards of temporary but exclusive market-based patent royalties for the time, discovery efforts and monies they have expended, will ultimately vanish.
You see, patent rights will become effectively weakened if patent infringement damage awards are limited as a matter of statute. Foreign competitors would be provided the wrong signal and would be encouraged to infringe upon US technologies and products containing them, knowing what the maximum all-out cost of a damage award could yield. Such arbitrage would also occur among compulsory license-loving centrally-planned foreign governments enamored of the ‘public interest’.
Can you provide evidence that candidates Clinton and Obama won’t pursue any of these ‘changes’? That foreign governments and foreign competitors won’t engage in patent infringement arbitrage at the market and government levels???
The public and I welcome your response.
Once the facts get out that candidates Clinton and Obama will give away American constitutional sovereignty, cutting-edge technologies, private property rights and yet-as-known sources of new 21st century American jobs, as a gesture of foreign policy - international charity and solidarity - and for the sake of ‘improving America’s ‘tattered’ image abroad’, these candidates will need to answer to the public. Only the American people, through transparent and open public debate, can sanction such initiatives. Do you not agree?
All the Best,
Informed Lawyer USA
Posted by: Informed Lawyer USA April 17th, 2008 at 7:50 pm Report this co
Monday, April 7, 2008
German Deep Ecology, Mystical, Anti-Capitalist Philosophies Are More Closely Aligned With Europe's Precautionary Principle Than Politicians Reveal
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1013357
Normative Aspects of a “Substantive” Precautionary Principle
By Gordon Hull / Iowa State University
(Sept. 7, 2007)
[T]he distinction between formal and substantive versions of a principle, familiar from legal theory, can be useful in imposing some conceptual clarity on aspects of debates concerning the precautionary principle. In particular, most of the negative critical response to the principle has been to formal versions of it, and follows a pattern not unfamiliar from discussions of how to get from rules to outcomes. For its part, the less-discussed substantive account admits of at least two very different emphases, one of which exhibits a deep distrust of technology, and the other of which is less concerned with the fact of technology than with the question of who controls it.
(p. 1)
...In particular, it is one thing for Western corporate executives to advocate a carte blanche in favor of GMO crops, and for Western activists to offer a carte blanche opposition. It is quite another to have one’s own food source hang in the balance.
Indeed, as Clark, Mugabe and Smith imply, it would not be hard to read the entire debate as yet another example of colonialist discourse that purports to make decisions on behalf of indigenous farmers. Certainly this is a plausible reading of the behavior of global agribusiness, heavily backed by the scientific and governmental apparatus of the U.S. and a legal system of intellectual property which seems to be specifically crafted to advance those interests.31 However, to the extent that critics like Cross are right that the precautionary enterprise is reactive, and that attempts to procedurally operationalize it generate per se opposition to the products of industry, the precautionary principle seems vulnerable to the same complaint. I propose that we think about the precautionary principle as a substantive principle. I draw the formal/substantive distinction from the legal academy... (pp. 16-17)
...One reason to divide the precautionary principle into substantive and procedural versions is the further distinction this allows between two sub-types of the substantive version. What follows is an attempt to sketch these sub-types, which I will for convenience call the “Heideggerian” and “autonomist.” (p. 18)
...At one level, the Heideggerian and autonomist versions are structurally very similar: both point to a systemic problem which undermines the capacity of procedural rationality to be exercised correctly; both pose the problem of an adequate standpoint for critique; both generate and are accompanied by a radically re-visioned understanding of science; and each has a specific disadvantage not shared with the other. At another level, they can generate very different results. (pp. 18-19)
(1) The Heideggerian critique is fundamentally one of the status of technology: thinking in modern society, says the Heideggerian, is fundamentally subordinated to what one might call the “technological world view.” Heidegger’s work is notoriously difficult; let me here simply present a passage and offer a brief exegesis of it as it applies here. In his “Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger writes that “the revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such.”34 All ways of encountering the world, Heidegger thinks, come laden sith presuppositions and unthought assumptions about the nature of objects in that world.
In the case of the technological worldview, the primary unthought assumptions cluster around the subordination of nature to human causality and the disruption of nature’s own temporal processes. Thus, in one of his examples, Heidegger compares agriculture as undertaken by a peasant and that undertaken by modern agribusiness. Although the peasant certainly uses technology in some minimal sense, the process is fundamentally subordinate to nature, at least in contrast with modern agribusiness. Indeed, from a Heideggerian point of view, modern agribusiness epitomizes the technological world view: rather than letting crops grow, or even inducing them to grow by careful cultivation and irrigation, technology attempts to alter the genetics of these crops in a laboratory, to plant them in soil which has been heavily fertilized (energy supplied by nature and stored for use by the crop), to destroy all other natural processes (pests and weeds) which might interfere with the crop’s growth, and so forth. (p. 19)
The problem here for Heidegger is not the use of a particular tool per se; rather, it is the underlying view according to which nature is to be subordinated to human ends. Deliberately using militaristic language, Heidegger suggests that everything – and he thinks humans do this to themselves as well – is ordered to “stand by,” waiting for its redeployment in the technological matrix: “everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering” (322). That we can no longer see the world in any other way, or that we only do so with great difficulty, attests to the power of the technological world view. Heidegger, at the very least, wants to make us uncomfortable with this worldview, in order to “prepare a free relation” to technology.
... The problem for critique posed in a Heideggerain account is one of the status of ethics: to be meaningful as a critique of the technological world view, ethics cannot itself be technological. (p.20)
The most obvious examples of ethical theories that would fail on Heideggerian grounds are utilitarianism and its offshoots in economics; risk-benefit analysis would be exemplary.
Heidegger complains of technological thinking that the goal is always “the maximum yield at the minimum expense” (322), and it is not difficult to see that the fundamental problem that he poses for ethics is how to escape this calculative mindset. On the other hand, and for this reason, it is also difficult to see what one’s ethical criteria would be after Heidegger.37 Heidegger’s critics frequently charge him with quietism, and even commentators who are broadly sympathetic in the sense that they are receptive to “post-humanist” argument often claim that “from within Heidegger’s categorical framework, an ethics or politics simply cannot emerge.”38
[“The famous uncertainty principle, formulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, has shown that our knowledge of atomic phenomena is limited because the experimental procedures with which we must carry out our observations inevitably interfere with the phenomena that we wish to measure...[A] limit to our knowledge is fixed by the fact that we are incarnate beings, not disembodied spirits.” See Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Viking, 1982), p. 76.]
[“Earlier this century, the Heisenberg Principle established that the very act of observing a natural phenomenon can change what is being observed. Although the initial theory was limited in practice to special cases in subatomic physics, the philosophical implications were and are staggering. It is now apparent that since Descartes reestablished the Platonic notion and began the scientific revolution, human civilization has been experiencing a kind of Heisenberg Principle writ large. . . . [T]he world of intellect is assumed to be separate from the physical world.” See Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 253.]
[At least one commentator has found that Al Gore’s positions on environmental protection and the Precautionary Principle are closely aligned with the philosophy of noted German anti-technologist, Martin Heidegger, even though Mr. Gore fails to reference his work. “Despite the parade of quotes and references from Plato and Arendt, there is one thinker conspicuously absent from both Schell and Gore’s numerous citations but whose spirit is present on almost every page of both books: Martin Heidegger. Perhaps the absence of a reference to Heidegger is due to reticence or discretion, given Heidegger’s dubious and complicated association with Nazism. Nothing derails an argument faster than playing the reductio ad Hitlerum card. More likely it is the abstruse and difficult character of Heidegger’s arguments; Gore and Schell may not realize how closely the core of their argument about the technological alienation of man from nature tracks Heidegger’s more thorough account in his famous 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology.” See Steven F. Hayward, “The Fate of the Earth in the Balance: The Metaphysics of Climate Change”, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY OUTLOOK AEI Online (Oct. 19, 2006) at: http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25033/pub_detail.asp .]
A Heideggerian approach to precaution would almost certainly reject the introduction of GMO bananas into Uganda and would favor instead attempts at control of the pest. Jacques Ellul is being a perfect Heideggerian, when, in discussing an appropriate ethics for a technological society, he derives what he calls an “apriorism of nonintervention: (p. 22)
“Whenever the scientist or technician are unable to determine with the greatest accuracy and certainty the global and long-term effects of a possible technique, it is absolutely vital to refuse to engage the processes of such a technique. We are here in the presence of an ethical rule that is central if one wants to maintain life and a viable society." 40 (pp. 22-23)
(2) The autonomist will also identify a systemic problem: in this case, the “complete subsumption” of society by capitalism.41 Drawing on a fragment from Marx’s Grundrisse, Antonio Negri describes this social form as one in which “labor processes themselves are born within capital, and therefore … labor is incorporated not as an external but as an internal force, proper to capital itself.” 42 This means, as he puts it in an earlier work, that “capital constitutes society,” and that “capital is the totality of labor and life.”43 Not just work relations, but all social relations, are constituted within a frame whose fundamental parameters are capitalist. (p. 23)
... The problem for critique thus posed is that of standpoint: if all of society is determined by capitalism, then from what standpoint can one frame an adequate critique? How is it possible to frame a critique that is not always already co-opted by capitalism?
... Given that the complete subsumption of society by capital signals the disappearance of any
transcendental standpoint from which a critique could be launched, Hardt and Negri argue that
critique must now be bottom-up, the results precisely of the laboring of the “multitude.” Capital both enables and suppresses this process. It is enabling because the isomorphism of labor and society means that social activity is productive and because immaterial labor takes the form of networks. These networks can then be turned against capital.
... The disadvantage to the autonomist emphasis on democracy is the risk that local decisions will be bad ones; the “multitude,” after all, has historically been a term indicating disorder and confusion, not prudential action, and philosophers since Aristotle have warned about the tendency of devolution into mob rule. Sunstein summarizes the point in terms of the precautionary principle: “the problem is that both individuals and societies may be fearful of nonexistent or trivial risks – and simultaneously neglect real dangers.”51 Not only does precaution invite bad decisions, giving local autonomy makes them worse!
I do not want to settle this debate here, but I would like to outline at least two possible answers to this argument.
... Second, even if we assume that local groups will make mistakes, there is still the normative question of whether outside elites ought to have the standing to stop those mistakes in their name. Admittedly, globalization makes this a very complex issue, worthy of much more discussion than I can give it here. At the very least, there are negative externalities to failures in risk assessment.
... Presumably, collective practice in making decisions, the availability of relevant information to those decisions, and collective ownership of the results would all tend to encourage responsible decisionmaking.
[THE PROBLEM HERE IS THAT THERE ARE OFTEN PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AT STAKE (PATENTS, TRADE SECRETS) THAT WOULD BE DIVULGED TO THE PUBLIC AND THUS VIOLATED IF THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IS APPLIED - THIS WAS NOTED EARLY ON, ABOVE]
Both the Heideggerian and autonomist constructions of precaution, then, involve radical rethinkings of what is involved in a “precautionary” decision. In work on precaution, they are sometimes conflated. (p.27)
Thus Jordan and O’Riordan begin by saying that the precautionary principle is vague and therefore political, but over the course of their paper, it becomes clear that they favor it because it supports ecocentric thought; by the last page, they are able to conclude that the principle “swims against the democratic tides.” (pp. 27-28)
M’Gonigle similarly credits “local knowledge” but at the same time seems to presuppose the result: local knowledge is that form which will succeed in situating “economic activity within ecological bounds” (136).
These examples of coexistence are uneasy, as the two constructions of precaution diverge deeply: for example, the Heideggerian suspicion of technology might easily be viewed as paternalistic from an autonomist perspective. Indeed, the two approaches reflect and express fundamentally different approaches to political philosophy. Despite the divergences, they share at least the thought that precaution needs to be attentive to empowering agents to make prudential decisions, and that this empowerment requires removing systematic obstructions to thought. (p. 28)
Normative Aspects of a “Substantive” Precautionary Principle
By Gordon Hull / Iowa State University
(Sept. 7, 2007)
[T]he distinction between formal and substantive versions of a principle, familiar from legal theory, can be useful in imposing some conceptual clarity on aspects of debates concerning the precautionary principle. In particular, most of the negative critical response to the principle has been to formal versions of it, and follows a pattern not unfamiliar from discussions of how to get from rules to outcomes. For its part, the less-discussed substantive account admits of at least two very different emphases, one of which exhibits a deep distrust of technology, and the other of which is less concerned with the fact of technology than with the question of who controls it.
(p. 1)
...In particular, it is one thing for Western corporate executives to advocate a carte blanche in favor of GMO crops, and for Western activists to offer a carte blanche opposition. It is quite another to have one’s own food source hang in the balance.
Indeed, as Clark, Mugabe and Smith imply, it would not be hard to read the entire debate as yet another example of colonialist discourse that purports to make decisions on behalf of indigenous farmers. Certainly this is a plausible reading of the behavior of global agribusiness, heavily backed by the scientific and governmental apparatus of the U.S. and a legal system of intellectual property which seems to be specifically crafted to advance those interests.31 However, to the extent that critics like Cross are right that the precautionary enterprise is reactive, and that attempts to procedurally operationalize it generate per se opposition to the products of industry, the precautionary principle seems vulnerable to the same complaint. I propose that we think about the precautionary principle as a substantive principle. I draw the formal/substantive distinction from the legal academy... (pp. 16-17)
...One reason to divide the precautionary principle into substantive and procedural versions is the further distinction this allows between two sub-types of the substantive version. What follows is an attempt to sketch these sub-types, which I will for convenience call the “Heideggerian” and “autonomist.” (p. 18)
...At one level, the Heideggerian and autonomist versions are structurally very similar: both point to a systemic problem which undermines the capacity of procedural rationality to be exercised correctly; both pose the problem of an adequate standpoint for critique; both generate and are accompanied by a radically re-visioned understanding of science; and each has a specific disadvantage not shared with the other. At another level, they can generate very different results. (pp. 18-19)
(1) The Heideggerian critique is fundamentally one of the status of technology: thinking in modern society, says the Heideggerian, is fundamentally subordinated to what one might call the “technological world view.” Heidegger’s work is notoriously difficult; let me here simply present a passage and offer a brief exegesis of it as it applies here. In his “Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger writes that “the revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such.”34 All ways of encountering the world, Heidegger thinks, come laden sith presuppositions and unthought assumptions about the nature of objects in that world.In the case of the technological worldview, the primary unthought assumptions cluster around the subordination of nature to human causality and the disruption of nature’s own temporal processes. Thus, in one of his examples, Heidegger compares agriculture as undertaken by a peasant and that undertaken by modern agribusiness. Although the peasant certainly uses technology in some minimal sense, the process is fundamentally subordinate to nature, at least in contrast with modern agribusiness. Indeed, from a Heideggerian point of view, modern agribusiness epitomizes the technological world view: rather than letting crops grow, or even inducing them to grow by careful cultivation and irrigation, technology attempts to alter the genetics of these crops in a laboratory, to plant them in soil which has been heavily fertilized (energy supplied by nature and stored for use by the crop), to destroy all other natural processes (pests and weeds) which might interfere with the crop’s growth, and so forth. (p. 19)
The problem here for Heidegger is not the use of a particular tool per se; rather, it is the underlying view according to which nature is to be subordinated to human ends. Deliberately using militaristic language, Heidegger suggests that everything – and he thinks humans do this to themselves as well – is ordered to “stand by,” waiting for its redeployment in the technological matrix: “everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering” (322). That we can no longer see the world in any other way, or that we only do so with great difficulty, attests to the power of the technological world view. Heidegger, at the very least, wants to make us uncomfortable with this worldview, in order to “prepare a free relation” to technology.
... The problem for critique posed in a Heideggerain account is one of the status of ethics: to be meaningful as a critique of the technological world view, ethics cannot itself be technological. (p.20)
The most obvious examples of ethical theories that would fail on Heideggerian grounds are utilitarianism and its offshoots in economics; risk-benefit analysis would be exemplary.
Heidegger complains of technological thinking that the goal is always “the maximum yield at the minimum expense” (322), and it is not difficult to see that the fundamental problem that he poses for ethics is how to escape this calculative mindset. On the other hand, and for this reason, it is also difficult to see what one’s ethical criteria would be after Heidegger.37 Heidegger’s critics frequently charge him with quietism, and even commentators who are broadly sympathetic in the sense that they are receptive to “post-humanist” argument often claim that “from within Heidegger’s categorical framework, an ethics or politics simply cannot emerge.”38
Two points remain. First, the resonance between a Heideggerian approach that radically rejects cost benefit analysis as an aspect of a technological world view which is itself unsustainable and a treatment of the precautionary principle that emphasizes precisely the need to depart from risk analysis should be clear.39 Second, that Heidegger is unable to think beyond the negation of a technological world view does not by itself make his critique of that worldview any less relevant: how one might speak of ethics “after Heidegger” is a rich and varied conversation. Heidegger is also deeply suspicious of the status of modern science. In the “Technology” essay, he argues that modern science is precisely a “herald” (327) of the emergence of the modern technological worldview. (p. 21)
Insofar as modern science divorces itself from any concern with natural purposes, takes nature to be fundamentally representable (and thus calculable), and demands that all scientific evidence be reproducible in exact, regulated experiments, Heidegger thinks that modern science exhibits all of the essential characteristics of modern enframing. (pp. 21-22)
Heidegger includes a favorable cite to Heisenberg; without wanting to comment on Heidegger’s understanding of physics generally, I simply want to parallel the gesture to the importance that advocates of the precautionary principle attach to the recognition of uncertainty in science. The argument is similarly motivated by a recognition of complexity: ecosystems are complex systems and are not therefore represented well in static or single-variable experiments; modern science (and in particular the studies used to conclude that the products of industry are safe) are single variable and do not track effects over time; therefore those studies do not map ecosystems successfully.
Insofar as modern science divorces itself from any concern with natural purposes, takes nature to be fundamentally representable (and thus calculable), and demands that all scientific evidence be reproducible in exact, regulated experiments, Heidegger thinks that modern science exhibits all of the essential characteristics of modern enframing. (pp. 21-22)
Heidegger includes a favorable cite to Heisenberg; without wanting to comment on Heidegger’s understanding of physics generally, I simply want to parallel the gesture to the importance that advocates of the precautionary principle attach to the recognition of uncertainty in science. The argument is similarly motivated by a recognition of complexity: ecosystems are complex systems and are not therefore represented well in static or single-variable experiments; modern science (and in particular the studies used to conclude that the products of industry are safe) are single variable and do not track effects over time; therefore those studies do not map ecosystems successfully.
Thus, in their outline of a possible “precautionary science,” Barrett and Raffensperger emphasize that
“precautionary science directly addresses the complexity of issues … and the uniqueness of biological, ecological, and social contexts, which render precise experimental replication problematic if not meaningless” (119). Or, as Kirschenmann puts it with regard to agriculture, the point is to see how “human industry can be folded into nature’s system, rather than how human industry can be imposed on those systems without doing too much harm” (288).
[“The famous uncertainty principle, formulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, has shown that our knowledge of atomic phenomena is limited because the experimental procedures with which we must carry out our observations inevitably interfere with the phenomena that we wish to measure...[A] limit to our knowledge is fixed by the fact that we are incarnate beings, not disembodied spirits.” See Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Viking, 1982), p. 76.]
[“Earlier this century, the Heisenberg Principle established that the very act of observing a natural phenomenon can change what is being observed. Although the initial theory was limited in practice to special cases in subatomic physics, the philosophical implications were and are staggering. It is now apparent that since Descartes reestablished the Platonic notion and began the scientific revolution, human civilization has been experiencing a kind of Heisenberg Principle writ large. . . . [T]he world of intellect is assumed to be separate from the physical world.” See Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 253.]
[At least one commentator has found that Al Gore’s positions on environmental protection and the Precautionary Principle are closely aligned with the philosophy of noted German anti-technologist, Martin Heidegger, even though Mr. Gore fails to reference his work. “Despite the parade of quotes and references from Plato and Arendt, there is one thinker conspicuously absent from both Schell and Gore’s numerous citations but whose spirit is present on almost every page of both books: Martin Heidegger. Perhaps the absence of a reference to Heidegger is due to reticence or discretion, given Heidegger’s dubious and complicated association with Nazism. Nothing derails an argument faster than playing the reductio ad Hitlerum card. More likely it is the abstruse and difficult character of Heidegger’s arguments; Gore and Schell may not realize how closely the core of their argument about the technological alienation of man from nature tracks Heidegger’s more thorough account in his famous 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology.” See Steven F. Hayward, “The Fate of the Earth in the Balance: The Metaphysics of Climate Change”, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY OUTLOOK AEI Online (Oct. 19, 2006) at: http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25033/pub_detail.asp .]A Heideggerian approach to precaution would almost certainly reject the introduction of GMO bananas into Uganda and would favor instead attempts at control of the pest. Jacques Ellul is being a perfect Heideggerian, when, in discussing an appropriate ethics for a technological society, he derives what he calls an “apriorism of nonintervention: (p. 22)
“Whenever the scientist or technician are unable to determine with the greatest accuracy and certainty the global and long-term effects of a possible technique, it is absolutely vital to refuse to engage the processes of such a technique. We are here in the presence of an ethical rule that is central if one wants to maintain life and a viable society." 40 (pp. 22-23)
(2) The autonomist will also identify a systemic problem: in this case, the “complete subsumption” of society by capitalism.41 Drawing on a fragment from Marx’s Grundrisse, Antonio Negri describes this social form as one in which “labor processes themselves are born within capital, and therefore … labor is incorporated not as an external but as an internal force, proper to capital itself.” 42 This means, as he puts it in an earlier work, that “capital constitutes society,” and that “capital is the totality of labor and life.”43 Not just work relations, but all social relations, are constituted within a frame whose fundamental parameters are capitalist. (p. 23)
... The problem for critique thus posed is that of standpoint: if all of society is determined by capitalism, then from what standpoint can one frame an adequate critique? How is it possible to frame a critique that is not always already co-opted by capitalism?
... Given that the complete subsumption of society by capital signals the disappearance of any
transcendental standpoint from which a critique could be launched, Hardt and Negri argue that
critique must now be bottom-up, the results precisely of the laboring of the “multitude.” Capital both enables and suppresses this process. It is enabling because the isomorphism of labor and society means that social activity is productive and because immaterial labor takes the form of networks. These networks can then be turned against capital.
At the same time, capital is always ready to co-opt and redirect this activity: thus Hardt and Negri write that capital “recognizes and profits from the fact that in cooperation bodies produce more and in community bodies enjoy more, but it has to obstruct and control this cooperative autonomy so as not to be destroyed by it.”47 Marxist class struggle, as a struggle for control over the means of production, becomes, in this instance, a struggle for the control over the production of information, with a strong demand that this information be democratically produced and owned.48
Thus, they write of transgenic food: (p. 24)
“Like all monsters, genetically modified crops can be beneficial or harmful to society. The best safeguard is that experimentation be conducted democratically and openly, under common control, something that private ownership prevents …. The primary issue … is not that humans are changing nature but that nature is ceasing to be common, that it is becoming private property and exclusively controlled by its new owners (Multitude, 183-4).” (pp. 24-25)
Here the focus is democracy; we see none of the anti-technology suspicion of the Heideggerian critique. Such focus on democracy would also answer to the cultural specificity of values associated with food; for example, one probable source of tension between the U.S. and Europe over GMO foods is a difference over the significance of the term “food.” (p. 25)
“Like all monsters, genetically modified crops can be beneficial or harmful to society. The best safeguard is that experimentation be conducted democratically and openly, under common control, something that private ownership prevents …. The primary issue … is not that humans are changing nature but that nature is ceasing to be common, that it is becoming private property and exclusively controlled by its new owners (Multitude, 183-4).” (pp. 24-25)
Here the focus is democracy; we see none of the anti-technology suspicion of the Heideggerian critique. Such focus on democracy would also answer to the cultural specificity of values associated with food; for example, one probable source of tension between the U.S. and Europe over GMO foods is a difference over the significance of the term “food.” (p. 25)
... The disadvantage to the autonomist emphasis on democracy is the risk that local decisions will be bad ones; the “multitude,” after all, has historically been a term indicating disorder and confusion, not prudential action, and philosophers since Aristotle have warned about the tendency of devolution into mob rule. Sunstein summarizes the point in terms of the precautionary principle: “the problem is that both individuals and societies may be fearful of nonexistent or trivial risks – and simultaneously neglect real dangers.”51 Not only does precaution invite bad decisions, giving local autonomy makes them worse!
I do not want to settle this debate here, but I would like to outline at least two possible answers to this argument.
First, the objectivity of the opposing point of view is seriously in question. My point here is not just that there is no value-free, objective standard from which to measure science. It is also, as I have noted, that there is specific reason to suspect that the term “objective” is used as a mask for corporate interests, and as part of an effort to marshal the epistemic authority of “science” to force compliance with international corporate desiderata. Not only is this approach therefore suspect, it may very well backfire; as Clark, Mugabe and Smith argue, one consequence of taking locals out of the decision-making loop is that the locals will come to trust science less and less. If scientific results are the aim, then forcing them on people might actually undermine that aim in the long term.
[THIS IS THE STANDARD ENVIRONMENTALIST RESPONSE TO SUBJECTING THEIR UNSUBSTANTIATED ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS TO SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION - NAMELY EMPIRICAL SCIENCE-BASED RISK ASSESSMENT].
Furthermore, the correct point does not seem to be that cultures will or will not make “mistakes” in risk assessment. It is that such mistakes are inevitable, and that there is no particular reason to think that abandoning the precautionary principle, or letting global elites set the level of acceptable risk that others have to bear will reduce the number of such mistakes.
(p. 26)
(p. 26)
... Second, even if we assume that local groups will make mistakes, there is still the normative question of whether outside elites ought to have the standing to stop those mistakes in their name. Admittedly, globalization makes this a very complex issue, worthy of much more discussion than I can give it here. At the very least, there are negative externalities to failures in risk assessment.
[ENVIRONMENTALISTS ALSO FREQUENTLY RELY ON THE CLAIM THAT 'SCIENCE IS NOT A TEMPLE' AND MISTAKES WILL BE MADE IN PERFORMING RISK ASSESSMENTS. THUS THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE MUST BE APPLIED TO PREVENT THE DISPUTED ACTIVITY FROM OCCURRING IN THE FIRST PLACE. ADD TO THIS THEIR CLAIM THAT THERE IS A 'DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN DECISIONMAKING' LEADING TO THE DECISION TO UNDERTAKE AND RELY UPON A RISK ASSESSMENT].
... Presumably, collective practice in making decisions, the availability of relevant information to those decisions, and collective ownership of the results would all tend to encourage responsible decisionmaking.
[THE PROBLEM HERE IS THAT THERE ARE OFTEN PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AT STAKE (PATENTS, TRADE SECRETS) THAT WOULD BE DIVULGED TO THE PUBLIC AND THUS VIOLATED IF THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IS APPLIED - THIS WAS NOTED EARLY ON, ABOVE]
Both the Heideggerian and autonomist constructions of precaution, then, involve radical rethinkings of what is involved in a “precautionary” decision. In work on precaution, they are sometimes conflated. (p.27)
Thus Jordan and O’Riordan begin by saying that the precautionary principle is vague and therefore political, but over the course of their paper, it becomes clear that they favor it because it supports ecocentric thought; by the last page, they are able to conclude that the principle “swims against the democratic tides.” (pp. 27-28)
M’Gonigle similarly credits “local knowledge” but at the same time seems to presuppose the result: local knowledge is that form which will succeed in situating “economic activity within ecological bounds” (136).
These examples of coexistence are uneasy, as the two constructions of precaution diverge deeply: for example, the Heideggerian suspicion of technology might easily be viewed as paternalistic from an autonomist perspective. Indeed, the two approaches reflect and express fundamentally different approaches to political philosophy. Despite the divergences, they share at least the thought that precaution needs to be attentive to empowering agents to make prudential decisions, and that this empowerment requires removing systematic obstructions to thought. (p. 28)
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