Research conducted by psychologists at numerous universities reveals that most personal and social problems derive from the failure of self-control. Examples include: compulsive spending and borrowing, under achievement in school, procrastination, alcohol and drug abuse, unhealthy diet, chronic anxiety and explosive anger. Poor self-control correlates with just about every kind of personal trauma including: losing friends, being fired, getting divorced and winding up in prison. It is interesting to note that in a recent world-wide survey of over one million persons, their lists of personal virtues included: honesty, kindness, humor, creativity and bravery and so forth but not self-control. However, when these same persons were asked to list their failings, self-control was at the top of the list.
In a long-term study of 1000 children in New Zealand from birth to age thirty two, the researchers found that the children who exhibited the most self control in childhood grew up to have better physical health, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, more stable marriages, higher education and better paying jobs. By contrast more than 40 % of the children with the very lowest level of self-control had criminal convictions by age 32 versus 12% of those children showing the highest degree of self-control.
Self-control keeps one from being swayed from the right course by evil forces which can come from either outside or inside the person. We used to believe that a conscience in an individual was a vital component needed to set the right course, and society spent a large amount of time and money developing consciences and self-control in children. This began at virtually the time the child arrived and continued until the child was an adult about eighteen years of age. In the early days when people resided in villages or farms and everyone knew everyone, virtue was enforced by public disgrace. Nathaniel Hawthorn’s book “The Scarlet Letter” regarding adultery comes to mind. The Ten Commandments also helped keep one on the strait and narrow. The ultimate goal was for each person to develop self-control because it was believed that those who learned how to utilize self-control would be more useful, reliable, morally grounded and responsible citizens.
Beginning in the 1960’s, however, the ideas of a moral conscience and self-control were weakened as society began to celebrate self indulgence. “If it feels good, just do it”. Concurrently, social scientists began to seek the causes for lack of consciences and self-control. They concluded that the causes were poverty, depreciation and failures of the economy, the environment or political influences. In short, the idea was that the individual was not responsible. In fact the individual was a victim. Moreover, we started to believe that we must be careful not to harm a child’s self-esteem, so we rewarded them for nearly anything and everything they did regardless of the quality of the child’s performance
Now, shock of shock, we suddenly are learning that major leaders of our society seem to lack moral compasses and self-control. Do the names Enron, Adelphia , Bernie Madoff, unscrupulous Wall Street derivative purveyors, etc. come to mind? This has prompted our major business schools to add ethics courses to those of business management. Hello!!! They have to be kidding!!! Haven’t’ they heard of the adage, “You can’t teach old dog new tricks?”
A new book entitled: “Willpower” sheds a whole new light on the subject of self-control. The book shows that Willpower is the mechanism that individuals employ to keep them on the right course. The existence of willpower, from whence it comes and how to employ it to maximum benefit are the major parts of the research reported in the book. The researchers have found that improving willpower is the best way to a better life. But willpower is used for other purposes like making decisions. So, willpower is under constant stress. Here are a few highlights of the many suggestions the book offers for the times when Willpower is needed.
Set Clear Goals:
The authors state that the first step in self-control is to set clear goals. Self control without goals would be like trying to diet without knowing the caloric content of individual foods. However, one should avoid setting goals that conflict with other goals, and it is important that one not set too many goals.
Willpower is Like a Muscle:
Willpower can become fatigued from overuse. When that happens we lose self-control. The researchers learned that willpower gives the strength to persevere, and we lose self-control as willpower is depleted. They further affirm that, like muscles, mental energy is also fueled by glucose.
Strengthening Will Power:
Although willpower is not actually a muscle, research has shown that willpower can be strengthened. There are several possible ways this can work. One that works and would be easy to do is to use perfect posture, e.g. “sit up straight”. Persons participating in the experiments who consciously overcame their habit of slouching, showed significantly greater self-control.
Decision Fatigue:
It turns out that decision making saps one’s willpower. The trick is to limit the number of major decisions one might attempt to make while attempting to achieve a goal.
Procrastination:
Each of us has a tendency to procrastinate at one time or another. What happens when we are faced with a hard task, including ones with deadlines, is that we don’t want to tackle the hard task. So, suddenly we discover a large pile of stuff that we have been putting off, and we dive into that rather than to face the primary job. As a result that we have no energy left to work on the major job, and consequently the job gets put off again. Or if it must be accomplished in the prescribed timeframe, the quality is poor and in some cases completely unacceptable.
The suggestion from the research is that when confronted with the major task and its timetable, STOP, DO NOTHING! It is better to stop, maybe take a nap and then tackle the major task when refreshed. Everyone will be happier. You because you got it done and on time, and your boss, because you got it done and on time and with high quality to boot!!
Self-Esteem Versus Self-Control:
For a generation psychologists, including those who were involved in the studies reported in the book, operated on the principle that we need to protect the very fragile young human and must be especially careful not to destroy its self esteem. While growing up society rewarded them for everything and anything. Even failure was rewarded on the basis that the child “tried”. The idea was that if self-esteem were developed in a child, performance would follow.
The authors report that when the psychologists received the data from the research, they were shocked to find that their theories were wrong. They and society at large clearly had the idea backward. The research shows that performance creates self-esteem, not the other way around. Moreover, those persons who participated in the research who earned self-esteem had higher levels of self-control.
Supporting the research is anecdotal evidence from real life that finds that mollycoddled children, now in their thirties, are landing in the psychiatrists’ offices. What has happened is that they are now in the real world where one is rewarded only if one actually achieves a realistic goal. Having reached adulthood, the child can’t handle the rejection the real world delivers for failure to achieve real goals. Thus, they visit their psychologists to try to “find themselves”.
The bottom line conclusion is that self-esteem must be earned and not bestowed if a child is to become a strong, reliable and responsible adult with built in self-control What a shock that is!! The book dedicates a whole chapter to this issue; “Raising Strong Children: Self-Esteem versus Self-Control”, and it may be the authors’ greatest contribution.
The book, “Willpower”, is chock-a-block full of research data gathered from controlled experiments conducted over the past two or three decades. It breaks willpower into its physiological and psychological components and how to use it. The book combines clearly described scientific experiments, practical advice and a path forward from the morass we find our selves in. Based on their findings, there is hope for our society. It is a must read for parents who have the job of raising the next generation as well as anyone who would like to have more self-control.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Perspective: Self-Control
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Perspective: Where Did the Jobs Go
We are slowly recovering from the Great Recession, but it is called a jobless one. So, why are jobs not being created? A new book entitled, “Race Against the Machine by Erick Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two professors from MIT, explains what is happening. It turns out that machines based on the new digital technology have caused more US job losses than any other factor including overseas competition.
Machines based on digital technology have been replacing humans in many phases for quite a while, but we have barely noticed it. Now, we are entering the phase where the introduction of new complex digital applications is going faster and faster as shown.
Pilot less Airplanes
Driverless Cars
Language Translation
Twitter
Facebook
U-tube
the I-Pad II
the I-Pad
the I-Phone
the I-Pod
IBM's Watson wins Jeopardy
ATM machine, Internet, e-mail, cell phone, digital cameras,
The authors point out that Information Technology (IT) is transforming manufacturing, distribution, retailing, media, finance, law, medicine, research, management, marketing and almost every other economic sector. The book’s sub-title, “How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy”, describes the scope and magnitude of the change. The authors state that the rate of improvement in the digital technology and the adoption of it are exponential.
Mathematically speaking, exponential growth starts very small, so small that the growth is practically indistinguishable, and then, once it starts growing, it grows faster and faster, so fast that it shoots right up through the top of the graph.
Pattern recognition and voice activated instructions used to be the domain of the human mind, but machines are catching up and in some cases exceeding the unique capability of the human mind. Currently, digital technology is doubling every 18 months, and the experts have no idea how far this development can go. However, they are convinced that computer hardware, software and networks will become ever more powerful, swift and will have an ever increasing impact on jobs, skills and the economy. Moreover, adoption is worldwide, including China, and there will be no way to stop that. Worse for humans, the race has just begun, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
In a word, investment in machines is replacing and will continue to replace investment in humans. The authors claim that: “We are in the throes of a Great Restructuring and our technologies are racing ahead while many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind.” This book is a must read.
Pattern recognition and voice activated instructions used to be the domain of the human mind, but machines are catching up and in some cases exceeding the unique capability of the human mind. Currently, digital technology is doubling every 18 months, and the experts have no idea how far this development can go. However, they are convinced that computer hardware, software and networks will become ever more powerful, swift and will have an ever increasing impact on jobs, skills and the economy. Moreover, adoption is worldwide, including China, and there will be no way to stop that. Worse for humans, the race has just begun, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The reason for the acceptance of the digital technology is that the machines perform better than humans. They make far fewer mistakes; they work 24/7, don’t get sick or require maternity leave, don’t take vacations, don’t join unions and go on strike and don’t demand higher wages, health care insurance or pensions. And the machines have become more applicable and less and less expensive as the technology has improved.
A couple of examples of whole industries being impacted are worth noting. You have doubtless noticed that your dentist and doctor now read x-rays on their computers. Digital has replaced an entire industry that used to be based on silver halide photographic prints. Today, Eastman Kodak, the once giant company that created much of the film technology, teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They either did not see digital coming or treated it as a passing fancy that would have no major impact upon their silver based business.
A second example was discussed in an earlier blog, namely, the new electronic book
(e-book) invented by Amazon called the Kindle. The Kindle is four years old this month, and is already replacing the traditional paper-based book. The e-book has the potential of eliminating all the human work involved in manufacturing and marketing a paper book from cutting the tree, converting it to paper, printing the paper, binding the book including the publishing and subsequent shipment of the book to stores and libraries. The number of human jobs that will be eliminated from this one application alone is gigantic.
Given the information about the degree of penetration of digital technology into our daily lives and the number of human jobs displaced, one might expect that it would be a main topic of discussion in Media, Business, Institutional and Government publications; but there is virtually no mention of the impact of digital technology anywhere.
Instead, we hear from our Media, Congress and especially our President that evil, greedy, immoral and possibly illegal Wall Street has somehow caused Main Street to lose income while an ever increasing amount of remuneration is going to Wall Street employees. In short, the argument goes, “the rich are getting richer at the expense of the Main Street middle class who are getting poorer”. We are told over and over that the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects his mood.
However, based on what the authors of “Race the Machine” are telling us, Wall Street has nothing to do with what is causing the Great Restructuring. Since we now know how broadly and pervasive the adoption of job-stealing digital technology is and how businesses, government, non-profit institutions and we as individuals are taking advantage of it, we have found the culprit. In the words of that famous possum of comic strip days, Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
In summary, why the recovery from the Great Recession has been jobless is now clear.
Government to create a business friendly atmosphere to reduce uncertainty so that the businesses can plan for the future.
Stop talking about taxing these Sub-chapter S companies who gross $250,000/year and create a sensible tax structure that has longevity
Reduce and eliminate unnecessary regulations
Repeal Obmacare and replace it with small-business friendly new healthcare or at lease provide a waiver to remove the fear of hiring that this business group has.
Government to focus on settling the real estate bubble so construction can begin again
If financial assistance is needed for those thrown out of work by the new digital machines, the present unemployment insurance program should be used. But the recipients of such assistance should be required to take courses that would permit them to compete in the new markets or they should be required to perform meaningful work for the community that the community cannot afford to staff.
If our government would undertake such programs, we would see economic activity increase in proportion to the confidence instilled in businesses, and jobs would begin to grow again. The revenues lost as machines take tax payers jobs would be replaced by additional taxpayers who will manage the machines, those who create new machines and those whose jobs are immune from machine take over.
Machines based on digital technology have been replacing humans in many phases for quite a while, but we have barely noticed it. Now, we are entering the phase where the introduction of new complex digital applications is going faster and faster as shown.
Pilot less Airplanes
Driverless Cars
Language Translation
U-tube
the I-Pad II
the I-Pad
the I-Phone
the I-Pod
IBM's Watson wins Jeopardy
ATM machine, Internet, e-mail, cell phone, digital cameras,
The authors point out that Information Technology (IT) is transforming manufacturing, distribution, retailing, media, finance, law, medicine, research, management, marketing and almost every other economic sector. The book’s sub-title, “How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy”, describes the scope and magnitude of the change. The authors state that the rate of improvement in the digital technology and the adoption of it are exponential.
Mathematically speaking, exponential growth starts very small, so small that the growth is practically indistinguishable, and then, once it starts growing, it grows faster and faster, so fast that it shoots right up through the top of the graph.
Pattern recognition and voice activated instructions used to be the domain of the human mind, but machines are catching up and in some cases exceeding the unique capability of the human mind. Currently, digital technology is doubling every 18 months, and the experts have no idea how far this development can go. However, they are convinced that computer hardware, software and networks will become ever more powerful, swift and will have an ever increasing impact on jobs, skills and the economy. Moreover, adoption is worldwide, including China, and there will be no way to stop that. Worse for humans, the race has just begun, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
In a word, investment in machines is replacing and will continue to replace investment in humans. The authors claim that: “We are in the throes of a Great Restructuring and our technologies are racing ahead while many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind.” This book is a must read.
Pattern recognition and voice activated instructions used to be the domain of the human mind, but machines are catching up and in some cases exceeding the unique capability of the human mind. Currently, digital technology is doubling every 18 months, and the experts have no idea how far this development can go. However, they are convinced that computer hardware, software and networks will become ever more powerful, swift and will have an ever increasing impact on jobs, skills and the economy. Moreover, adoption is worldwide, including China, and there will be no way to stop that. Worse for humans, the race has just begun, and we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The reason for the acceptance of the digital technology is that the machines perform better than humans. They make far fewer mistakes; they work 24/7, don’t get sick or require maternity leave, don’t take vacations, don’t join unions and go on strike and don’t demand higher wages, health care insurance or pensions. And the machines have become more applicable and less and less expensive as the technology has improved.
A couple of examples of whole industries being impacted are worth noting. You have doubtless noticed that your dentist and doctor now read x-rays on their computers. Digital has replaced an entire industry that used to be based on silver halide photographic prints. Today, Eastman Kodak, the once giant company that created much of the film technology, teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They either did not see digital coming or treated it as a passing fancy that would have no major impact upon their silver based business.
A second example was discussed in an earlier blog, namely, the new electronic book
(e-book) invented by Amazon called the Kindle. The Kindle is four years old this month, and is already replacing the traditional paper-based book. The e-book has the potential of eliminating all the human work involved in manufacturing and marketing a paper book from cutting the tree, converting it to paper, printing the paper, binding the book including the publishing and subsequent shipment of the book to stores and libraries. The number of human jobs that will be eliminated from this one application alone is gigantic.
Given the information about the degree of penetration of digital technology into our daily lives and the number of human jobs displaced, one might expect that it would be a main topic of discussion in Media, Business, Institutional and Government publications; but there is virtually no mention of the impact of digital technology anywhere.
Instead, we hear from our Media, Congress and especially our President that evil, greedy, immoral and possibly illegal Wall Street has somehow caused Main Street to lose income while an ever increasing amount of remuneration is going to Wall Street employees. In short, the argument goes, “the rich are getting richer at the expense of the Main Street middle class who are getting poorer”. We are told over and over that the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects his mood.
However, based on what the authors of “Race the Machine” are telling us, Wall Street has nothing to do with what is causing the Great Restructuring. Since we now know how broadly and pervasive the adoption of job-stealing digital technology is and how businesses, government, non-profit institutions and we as individuals are taking advantage of it, we have found the culprit. In the words of that famous possum of comic strip days, Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
In summary, why the recovery from the Great Recession has been jobless is now clear.
- The jobs are being taken by machines, and they won’t be coming back.
- Because capital investment in and maintenance of machines is low, employers have an incentive to continue to replace humans.
- Humans will not win the race against the machine given that the machine will be able to take over more and more human activities, and as the digital technology expands to do ever more complex work, the rate of human replacement will grow exponentially.
- Humans will have to team up with machines to survive.
The impact of this phenomenon is immense and must be addressed very soon with meaningful programs because it is true that Humans without jobs will not be able to purchase the goods that are made by robots and will not be paying the taxes required to sustain social programs. Consequently, the owners of the robots will become richer and the replaced humans will become poorer.
Creating class warfare by blaming this on those who own and/or have the knowledge to manage the robots is not only irresponsible but extremely dangerous. We already see mobs in the streets. Therefore, it is urgent that our leaders grasp the significance of this structural shift and begin to develop plans to deal effectively with it.
How to Begin:
The job creators should be divided into three phases: (1)Corporate and Institutional Businesses that can afford to purchase and manage digital technology, (2)Entrepreneurial Businesses Developing New Digital Applications and (3)Small and Start-up Businesses who cannot afford or don’t need to install or manage digital technology.
Major Corporate or Institutional Businesses These firms are already adopting the latest digital technology so they want workers who have the skills required to utilize and manage the digital equipment and programs. This means college and advance degrees in what is called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and will require constant upgrading of skills. The authors call this “Racing with the Machine”. These humans will earn good salaries, and if they keep up with the latest developments they will remain fully employed.
What This Group Needs:
- Taxes and regulations reduced to create a Level Playing Field with foreign competition.
- To fill the shortage of workers with STEM degrees (Science, Technology,Engineering,Math)
- Provide some financial assistance to students taking STEM courses
- Encourage females who make up 60% of college graduates to take and stay with STEM majors
- Encourage foreign students educated in STEM to stay and become citizens
Entrepreneurial Businesses Developing New Digital Applications: These are businesses that are creating new applications for digital technology that will extend the uses beyond Facebook and Twitter. They will attract the very smart extremely creative persons, and it will not matter what degree of education they have.
What this Group Needs:
Small and Start-Up Businesses: These firms are too small to afford to purchase and man digital technology or where digital technology cannot currently compete with humans. They will be able to employ those who have normal high school, trade school and junior college as well as college diplomas. A partial list of those in this category includes all of the trades such as plumbing, electrical, carpentry, construction, auto mechanics as well as health care and some phases of education
What This Group Needs:
If financial assistance is needed for those thrown out of work by the new digital machines, the present unemployment insurance program should be used. But the recipients of such assistance should be required to take courses that would permit them to compete in the new markets or they should be required to perform meaningful work for the community that the community cannot afford to staff.
If our government would undertake such programs, we would see economic activity increase in proportion to the confidence instilled in businesses, and jobs would begin to grow again. The revenues lost as machines take tax payers jobs would be replaced by additional taxpayers who will manage the machines, those who create new machines and those whose jobs are immune from machine take over.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
PERSPECTIVE: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO COMMON SENSE?
There used to be a general understanding of how Nature worked, and it was called “Common Sense”. However, beginning with the “boomer” generation, we began to depart from the accepted principles of Natural Law, and the new communication technologies have exponentially accelerated the pace of change so much so that our grandchildren’s generation lives a separate life from either their parents or grandparents. Small wonder then that there is minimal transfer of wisdom from those earlier generations to the new. In other words there is a rapidly diminishing supply of “Common Sense”, and today’s children are at greater risk than ever because of it.
To gain a perspective on the impact, imagine the apprentice knowing more about how to hitch up a team of horses than the master farmer. You can’t! But today the kids know infinitely more about the new communication technologies than anyone older. They are the modern apprentices! So, from their standpoint, if you don’t know how to program a VCR or how to use Facebook, Twitter or an I-Pad II without their help, what would you, as an adult, know about almost anything, including how to raise them? This generational disconnect is historic, unprecedented and very scary for our society!
It is a fact that our grandchildren speak a different language than their parents and grandparents, and the older generations have no clue how to use the new technology. Moreover, they probably would not understand what the grandkids are texting and tweeting anyway because of the short-hand language they use. On top of this, today’s parents worry more about their children’s self esteem than did the grandparent’s generation. Modern parents have a penchant for bestowing self esteem on their kids by rewarding every little event regardless of the level of performance, rather than having the child earn it. This makes the child feel that he or she is more invulnerable than a typical teenager would feel which places them at greater risk than any generation that preceded them.
The grandparent generation was exposed directly to Nature including germs without penicillin, poorly set broken limbs from a horse kick, the unsanitary conditions of having no indoor plumbing, unheated bedrooms and the out door toilet. We used to know how Nature worked because we lived close to the land and had first-hand knowledge of it. We also knew that self esteem had to be earned, and that one did not bring a wild animal into the house to live and then expect it to be able to survive if we turned it loose.
Today we award self-esteem to our children, even when they fail, and our government provides unending financial assistance via food stamps, unearned tax credits, and low cost Section 8 housing, even to the indolent, thinking that we are doing a good thing, no matter how contrary to Nature it may be. By the way, recent research is showing that many of those children who were given unearned rewards to protect their self esteem are now in their thirties and in the psychiatrists’ offices. The real world is not rewarding them, and they are confused. I’m shocked!
Three generations ago when current grandparents and great grandparents were kids, most of the US population lived in rural areas. During that time most of the farms were powered by horses, mules or oxen. It was rare for a farmer to own a tractor. Kids, even kids whose parents were not farmers, were taught how to hitch up a team of horses, and it was common for them to actually drive the team to do farm work as they worked along side their farm kid playmates. If you think about it that was the way that farming was done for centuries. And there was common knowledge about how to do this as well as how to live without electricity, telephones, central heating or indoor plumbing. There was a right and wrong way to do almost anything from hitching the horses, to using the outdoor “bathroom” to how to avoid the hazards associated with inappropriate behavior. And the understanding of all of this was held in common at virtually all levels of society.
By contrast, today’s children are exposed to none of this. They live in a bubble protected from the direct impact of raw Nature starting with inoculations at the cradle against virtually any disease you can think of and broken bones that can be set almost as an out-patient and living with all the modern conveniences. But in addition to being exposed to the normal idiosyncrasies of Nature, kids today are surrounded by drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex starting from the age of middle school. The grandparent’s generation was rarely exposed to these new risks, and use of them was verboten. Anyone caught doing it was ostracized and often severely punished.
I once had an experience that epitomizes how new technology can cause us to abandon all the principles learned from centuries. As a DuPont salesman I was promoting a polymer used to make a water-based paint. One day I called on the Technical Director of a paint company in South Bend, Indiana. On his desk lay a sheet of white material he told me was paint made from our product that blew off a house in South Bend. I rubbed my thumb on the surface of the sheet and it came up white from the old paint. We agreed that since the public believed that the new paint was a “miracle” paint, so easy to use etc., that they felt free to abandon the centuries of knowledge about what one must to do to apply a satisfactory and durable coating of paint. It took a decade for the public to learn that this principle applied to the water-base paints as well as the oil base ones.
So, can we regain a “Common Sense” about how Nature works? I am not sure in this Nanny State Society with Political Correctness changing all the definitions and dominating the language that we can, but here are a few guidelines that might help.
It takes a lot of living to understand fully how Nature works. Ergo, children do not know more than their elders, and the elders need to understand this.
Children unguided by their elders are vulnerable and exposed to the dangers present in Nature. Evil and the hazards of living exist and someone has to teach the young how to live safely.
The underlying principles of Nature should be taught at home and at school beginning at an early age.
We can sympathize with modern parents who try to raise this “new child” because the four pillars that supported the grandparents generation when they were raising children are no longer there. These were:
Parents knew that the parents job was, namely to be a parent not a pal, and that the primary job was to build a “conscience” into their children so they could be a responsible citizens by age eighteen.
The neighbor believed that they could be and should be a partner with the parent. If the neighbor caught a child about to make a mistake, the neighbor felt free to stop the child and bring the child to the parent. Usually the parent would reward the neighbor with a cup of coffee or tea.
The school felt that they were a full partner with the parent and handled the child as the parent would want. If the child got into trouble the parent backed the school and usually added punishment to whatever the school had imposed..
Most of the children went to Sunday School where the lessons of right and wrong, how to behave and how to become a responsible citizen were reinforced.
In one generation all four pillars have disappeared. The parent thinks he/she should be a pal, the neighbor stands aside for fear of being sued by the parent, the school knows it will be sued if it does anything that upsets the parent and hardly any child goes to Sunday School on a regular basis. Since the grandparents do not usually live in the same town as the grandchildren and since the grandparents are not fluent in the new communication technologies, there is little if any everyday contact. Moreover, should there be gatherings where children and adults are present, the grandchildren are busy texting friends or are listening to their music via their I-Pod. So, there is little if any communication between the generations even in family gatherings.
Is it possible for the adult generation to share information with the child that will provide some protection as they enter the larger world? Unfortunately, many parents overwhelmed by their own problems, have abandoned the job, and are letting the children fend for themselves. This means the children are getting their information from their peers, who incidentally are as ignorant of how Nature works as the child itself.
Many, including writers such as Anthony E. Wolfe, Ph.D., feel that the child will have to find out how things work for themselves. His book, titled, “Get out of My Life, But First Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall” provides a “Parents Guide to the New Teenager”. In this book Wolfe suggests that the parent should “let go”. He recognizes that the dangers the teenagers are exposed to are real, and he has many helpful suggestions for how to communicate with teenagers. However, Wolfe’s position is that the teens are out there in the real world on their own, and parents should accept this. How a parent is to do this is challenging and very scary! They would not let their pet out of the house if they knew that there were predators out there who would love to have it for lunch. Yet we are leaving the children out there where there are real predators and real hazards.
The question I am raising is how can the idea of being safe at all times and in all places be burned into their brains? We have seen that the grandparents are not there to do it and the parents have either abandoned their post or cannot find a way to communicate with their teenagers. So, can anyone communicate with the teenager about safety?
I believe that there is a way! Most companies these days stress safety. They have programs and regularly scheduled meetings with their employees to emphasize the importance of safety on the job, and they go beyond that to include discussions about the everyday safety issues related to the car and home. Persons present at these meeting will share real live risks they have experienced.. The group will then discuss possible ways to foresee and identify these risks afore hand and then they will talk about appropriate defensive actions that can be taken.
The reason for this dedication to the subject and use of Company time is to create a safety state-of-mind in their employees. They want the employee to think how to be safe at all times and in all places. And it works! Persons who experience this training will attest that being exposed to regularly scheduled safety discussions has armed them with knowledge that helps them to avoid impending danger for the rest of their lives.
So perhaps we can create a safety program for our teenagers. The schools should be able to help, and parents should talk to the school administrators to see what they can offer. Whenever there is a party or a sleepover at a person’s home, perhaps a parent or a teenager who is a leader could lead a discussion about an issue of safety the teenagers may be currently experiencing. If the child and his friends are embarrassed to speak in front of the parent, the parent should excuse him or herself, and let the kids go at it. Another possibility is to have routine safety messages texted to their phones by someone the child respects and would listen to. That person might be a coach, teacher, movie star or respected peer. How to set this up needs to be explored.
We must do something to help struggling parents who want their children to grow up safely in this strange new world, and we desperately must do something for the sake and safety of the children! And maybe, just maybe, there will come the day when the sense about how Nature really works will once again be held in common.
To gain a perspective on the impact, imagine the apprentice knowing more about how to hitch up a team of horses than the master farmer. You can’t! But today the kids know infinitely more about the new communication technologies than anyone older. They are the modern apprentices! So, from their standpoint, if you don’t know how to program a VCR or how to use Facebook, Twitter or an I-Pad II without their help, what would you, as an adult, know about almost anything, including how to raise them? This generational disconnect is historic, unprecedented and very scary for our society!
It is a fact that our grandchildren speak a different language than their parents and grandparents, and the older generations have no clue how to use the new technology. Moreover, they probably would not understand what the grandkids are texting and tweeting anyway because of the short-hand language they use. On top of this, today’s parents worry more about their children’s self esteem than did the grandparent’s generation. Modern parents have a penchant for bestowing self esteem on their kids by rewarding every little event regardless of the level of performance, rather than having the child earn it. This makes the child feel that he or she is more invulnerable than a typical teenager would feel which places them at greater risk than any generation that preceded them.
The grandparent generation was exposed directly to Nature including germs without penicillin, poorly set broken limbs from a horse kick, the unsanitary conditions of having no indoor plumbing, unheated bedrooms and the out door toilet. We used to know how Nature worked because we lived close to the land and had first-hand knowledge of it. We also knew that self esteem had to be earned, and that one did not bring a wild animal into the house to live and then expect it to be able to survive if we turned it loose.
Today we award self-esteem to our children, even when they fail, and our government provides unending financial assistance via food stamps, unearned tax credits, and low cost Section 8 housing, even to the indolent, thinking that we are doing a good thing, no matter how contrary to Nature it may be. By the way, recent research is showing that many of those children who were given unearned rewards to protect their self esteem are now in their thirties and in the psychiatrists’ offices. The real world is not rewarding them, and they are confused. I’m shocked!
Three generations ago when current grandparents and great grandparents were kids, most of the US population lived in rural areas. During that time most of the farms were powered by horses, mules or oxen. It was rare for a farmer to own a tractor. Kids, even kids whose parents were not farmers, were taught how to hitch up a team of horses, and it was common for them to actually drive the team to do farm work as they worked along side their farm kid playmates. If you think about it that was the way that farming was done for centuries. And there was common knowledge about how to do this as well as how to live without electricity, telephones, central heating or indoor plumbing. There was a right and wrong way to do almost anything from hitching the horses, to using the outdoor “bathroom” to how to avoid the hazards associated with inappropriate behavior. And the understanding of all of this was held in common at virtually all levels of society.
By contrast, today’s children are exposed to none of this. They live in a bubble protected from the direct impact of raw Nature starting with inoculations at the cradle against virtually any disease you can think of and broken bones that can be set almost as an out-patient and living with all the modern conveniences. But in addition to being exposed to the normal idiosyncrasies of Nature, kids today are surrounded by drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex starting from the age of middle school. The grandparent’s generation was rarely exposed to these new risks, and use of them was verboten. Anyone caught doing it was ostracized and often severely punished.
I once had an experience that epitomizes how new technology can cause us to abandon all the principles learned from centuries. As a DuPont salesman I was promoting a polymer used to make a water-based paint. One day I called on the Technical Director of a paint company in South Bend, Indiana. On his desk lay a sheet of white material he told me was paint made from our product that blew off a house in South Bend. I rubbed my thumb on the surface of the sheet and it came up white from the old paint. We agreed that since the public believed that the new paint was a “miracle” paint, so easy to use etc., that they felt free to abandon the centuries of knowledge about what one must to do to apply a satisfactory and durable coating of paint. It took a decade for the public to learn that this principle applied to the water-base paints as well as the oil base ones.
So, can we regain a “Common Sense” about how Nature works? I am not sure in this Nanny State Society with Political Correctness changing all the definitions and dominating the language that we can, but here are a few guidelines that might help.
It takes a lot of living to understand fully how Nature works. Ergo, children do not know more than their elders, and the elders need to understand this.
Children unguided by their elders are vulnerable and exposed to the dangers present in Nature. Evil and the hazards of living exist and someone has to teach the young how to live safely.
The underlying principles of Nature should be taught at home and at school beginning at an early age.
We can sympathize with modern parents who try to raise this “new child” because the four pillars that supported the grandparents generation when they were raising children are no longer there. These were:
Parents knew that the parents job was, namely to be a parent not a pal, and that the primary job was to build a “conscience” into their children so they could be a responsible citizens by age eighteen.
The neighbor believed that they could be and should be a partner with the parent. If the neighbor caught a child about to make a mistake, the neighbor felt free to stop the child and bring the child to the parent. Usually the parent would reward the neighbor with a cup of coffee or tea.
The school felt that they were a full partner with the parent and handled the child as the parent would want. If the child got into trouble the parent backed the school and usually added punishment to whatever the school had imposed..
Most of the children went to Sunday School where the lessons of right and wrong, how to behave and how to become a responsible citizen were reinforced.
In one generation all four pillars have disappeared. The parent thinks he/she should be a pal, the neighbor stands aside for fear of being sued by the parent, the school knows it will be sued if it does anything that upsets the parent and hardly any child goes to Sunday School on a regular basis. Since the grandparents do not usually live in the same town as the grandchildren and since the grandparents are not fluent in the new communication technologies, there is little if any everyday contact. Moreover, should there be gatherings where children and adults are present, the grandchildren are busy texting friends or are listening to their music via their I-Pod. So, there is little if any communication between the generations even in family gatherings.
Is it possible for the adult generation to share information with the child that will provide some protection as they enter the larger world? Unfortunately, many parents overwhelmed by their own problems, have abandoned the job, and are letting the children fend for themselves. This means the children are getting their information from their peers, who incidentally are as ignorant of how Nature works as the child itself.
Many, including writers such as Anthony E. Wolfe, Ph.D., feel that the child will have to find out how things work for themselves. His book, titled, “Get out of My Life, But First Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall” provides a “Parents Guide to the New Teenager”. In this book Wolfe suggests that the parent should “let go”. He recognizes that the dangers the teenagers are exposed to are real, and he has many helpful suggestions for how to communicate with teenagers. However, Wolfe’s position is that the teens are out there in the real world on their own, and parents should accept this. How a parent is to do this is challenging and very scary! They would not let their pet out of the house if they knew that there were predators out there who would love to have it for lunch. Yet we are leaving the children out there where there are real predators and real hazards.
The question I am raising is how can the idea of being safe at all times and in all places be burned into their brains? We have seen that the grandparents are not there to do it and the parents have either abandoned their post or cannot find a way to communicate with their teenagers. So, can anyone communicate with the teenager about safety?
I believe that there is a way! Most companies these days stress safety. They have programs and regularly scheduled meetings with their employees to emphasize the importance of safety on the job, and they go beyond that to include discussions about the everyday safety issues related to the car and home. Persons present at these meeting will share real live risks they have experienced.. The group will then discuss possible ways to foresee and identify these risks afore hand and then they will talk about appropriate defensive actions that can be taken.
The reason for this dedication to the subject and use of Company time is to create a safety state-of-mind in their employees. They want the employee to think how to be safe at all times and in all places. And it works! Persons who experience this training will attest that being exposed to regularly scheduled safety discussions has armed them with knowledge that helps them to avoid impending danger for the rest of their lives.
So perhaps we can create a safety program for our teenagers. The schools should be able to help, and parents should talk to the school administrators to see what they can offer. Whenever there is a party or a sleepover at a person’s home, perhaps a parent or a teenager who is a leader could lead a discussion about an issue of safety the teenagers may be currently experiencing. If the child and his friends are embarrassed to speak in front of the parent, the parent should excuse him or herself, and let the kids go at it. Another possibility is to have routine safety messages texted to their phones by someone the child respects and would listen to. That person might be a coach, teacher, movie star or respected peer. How to set this up needs to be explored.
We must do something to help struggling parents who want their children to grow up safely in this strange new world, and we desperately must do something for the sake and safety of the children! And maybe, just maybe, there will come the day when the sense about how Nature really works will once again be held in common.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Perspective: On Recycling
Why do we recycle? Is it that we have no other means for disposal of discarded items? No, we have plenty of environmentally sound and economical landfills and waste-to-energy incinerators that meet the criteria nicely. However, environmentalists generally are against landfills and waste-to-energy plants because they fear some adverse environmental consequence. Other arguments include that we are running out of land space for landfills, and of course the old saw, NIMBY, Not In My Backyard.
Environmental activists argue that plastics need to be recycled or banned because they are non-biodegradable, and are made from non-renewable resources. The non-biodegradability argument is that plastics will remain in a landfill forever. Actually, there is little that biodegrades in a modern landfill. We learned this when a Professor of Anthropology from the University of Arizona, who normally digs in ancient man’s discards, decided to dig in modern man’s garbage. He chose a 50 year old landfill and with his students began to dig down. They recorded the dates as they went. Since carbon fourteen would not measure dates within an accuracy of plus or minus 50 years, how did he record dates? Simple, he said, they just read the dates on newspapers that were found. Just as Claude Rains, playing Captin Louis Renault in Casablanca was shocked, shocked to discover that gambling was going on in Rick’s Café, we were all shocked, shocked to find that newspapers do not biodegrade in a landfill. Subsequently the professor reported finding kernels of corn on cobs and meat on chicken thighs.
The fact of the matter is that in modern landfills water is kept out by a combination of water proof liners placed on the bottom and walls of the landfill and then the garbage is covered with soil each day. The result is the microorganisms that could do the biodegrading cannot survive in such a water and oxygen free environment. The good news is that if we ever do run out of non-renewable valuable resources, such as aluminum, glass, steel, plastics and even paper, we will probably dig up the landfills to recover them.
While we are talking about the non-biodegradadability of plastics, it is worthwhile to note that the very microorganisms that can’t biodegrade plastics will mutate to biodegrade them when starved of their favorite easy-to-digest materials. And this technology has been employed to develop bugs that will biodegrade oil spills.
As regards the non-renewable resource argument, it needs also be mentioned that before petrochemical sources for making plastics were discovered, they were made from wood.
Now, as a basic principle, it is important to understand that, other than food waste, virtually any material can be recovered for reuse or made into another use. We have the technology to do this. Even food waste, lawn trimmings and tree limbs can be composted commercially to make humus for nurturing plants. But are the materials we throw out valuable enough to cover the full costs of recycling? Let’s see:
Item Derived From Cost To Value of
Recycle Recyclables
Gold Gold metal Medium Extremely high
Silver Silver metal Medium Very high
Aluminum Bauxite Very High High
Plastics Oil, Gas, Trees High Low
Paper Trees High Low
Glass Sand High Very Low
Steel Iron Ore Medium Low
Food, Etc. Vegatation Medium Zero
As can be seen, silver, gold and aluminum are quite valuable either because the base material is scarce or, as in the case for aluminum, the energy required to convert the raw material, bauxite, to metal is very high. With oil at $85 per barrel, certain complex plastics such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) used in beverage bottles and food containers and polycarbonate used in CDs and bulletproof windows, will have sufficient value to offset the costs of collecting and cleaning the polymers for reuse. The rest of the recyclables are less valuable, and in poor economic times such as these, paper and ordinary plastics packaging may have little or no recycle market value at all. Therefore, recycling must be subsidized by taxes or fees added to garbage pick up fees. What is interesting to note, however, is that the value of paper and plastics as fuel is quite high. Thus, disposal via a waste-to energy makes economic sense even in these distressed economic times.
The questions then are these: (1) is recycling economic, (2) does it save valuable resources and (3) is it good for the environment? The short answers are that, in the case of some materials such as gold, silver and aluminum, it is economic and saves valuable resources, but recycling is not always favorable to the environment.
Recycling can only be economic if the costs to gather and recover the basic material do not exceed the price to be received for the recovered material. The costs associated with recycling include labor, materials, depreciation of equipment and energy. As a result the total cost of recycling reflects directly on the environmental impact. So, if the cost exceeds the market value of the recovered product, recycling that item is probably bad for the environment. This is a good “rule of thumb” to keep in mind.
To understand the economic and environmental impact of recycling, it is useful to trace the trash from our homes or businesses to the places of disposal. If it is to be shipped to a landfill or a waste-to-energy plant, your trash is picked up by a garbage truck at your home or business where, without any separation by you or the garbage man, it is hauled directly to the landfill or waste-to energy plant where it is dumped. The garbage truck then returns to pick up more garbage.
Recyclables, on the other hand, are picked up in a separate truck which uses about the same amount of fuel as the garbage truck. Some places have the driver separate one material from another at the curb. Usually the truck’s engine idles as this task is being completed which can take up to five to ten times that of tossing the garbage into a garbage truck. If the recyclables are not separated at the curb, the truck will then drive to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) where the commingled recyclable materials are dumped onto the floor and moved about via conveyer belts to where they are separated by workers or a machine and then prepared to shipment to an aluminum, steel, glass, paper, plastic producer for manufacturing into a new containers or other useful items.
Every step of the current recycle process consumes fossil-based energy from the diesel fuel for the pick up truck, through the propane fueled front-end loaders that move the garbage, to electric motor driven conveyer belts in the MRF to the diesel fuel of the truck that hauls the separated materials to the plants of the respective users of the recovered items. Consequently, it should be obvious that recycling will use more fossil-based fuel to do all the hauling to and separating at the MRF than just sending the items with ordinary trash to a landfill or waste-to-energy plant. Moreover, it may not be obvious, but with the exception of aluminum, the energy required to process the recycled material to a final product can be as high as the energy required to make the same product from virgin material. So, there is little if any savings to be had there either. If this is so, then the total amount of fossil-derived fuel to recycle is quite a bit more than that required to landfill or to incinerate it.
There is a way that recyclables commingled with the garbage could be processed less expensively. That way is to haul all the trash to a factory where the recyclables can be separated from the trash mechanically. The State of Delaware had such a facility in Newcastle County just south of Wilmington that could process 1000 tons of garbage per day collected from the Wilmington area. The trash was picked up via the normal garbage truck and shipped to the facility where the garbage truck was emptied upon the floor. From there machines would separate the recyclables from the trash. Metals were separated from the trash via magnets in the case of iron and steel, and by eddy currents in the case of aluminum and along with copper were sold. Paper and plastics were separated from the pile by air jets and then compacted into pellets where they were transported via a pipe to an adjacent plant where they became fuel for an electricity generating plant. The glass did not have to be separated by type because all of it was shipped across the Delaware River to New Jersey where an Owens Corning plant used it as a feedstock for the production of fiber glass for insulation. The remaining garbage and lawn trimmings, etc. were sent to four composters in the plant which were about 75 feet in diameter which had large paddles to stir the garbage until it was composted whereupon it was used as humus for the trees and gardens in the State.
This method was deemed economic, but it was it shut down. Why? Well, Owens Corning closed their New Jersey plant, and since it was uneconomic to separate the glasses by type, all the glass was landfilled. New environmental regulations placed upon the electricity plant next door were too expensive, so rather than make the investment required, the owners elected to close the facility and purchase electricity. Fortunately, Delaware was able to sell the pellets to Chester, Pennsylvania who used them as fuel for their waste-to-energy plant.
The coup-de-gras came when one day a State Senator drove past the plant and noted a foul odor, which of course was coming from the composting. As a consequence, the plant was required to place collectors over each of the four composters with a chimney high enough to have the fumes blow into New Jersey with the prevailing winds the cost was too high, so they closed the garbage processing plant permanently.
Since fossil-derived fuel is believed to be the cause of Global Warming, or excuse me, Climate Change, why would one want to undertake uneconomic recycling programs that require fossil fuel and harm the very environment to be saved?
The reason we are willing to be coerced into recycling, and virtually led like sheep to do it, must lie in our concern about our compulsive consumption and how we deal with the trash it creates. While we have no compunction about throwing away the skin of, say, a banana, we feel enormous guilt about throwing away the “skin” (read container) that contains our beverages and other materials. So, we must do something to atone for this sin. The tasks associated with recycling make us feel that we are doing the right thing. An alternate, and environmentally sound approach, would be for communities to provide a person from the clergy, who upon hearing our confessions, could absolve us of the sin of being a wasteful consumer.
It fascinates me that we have those in this country who want to remove the word God in the Pledge to Allegiance, will not permit a Crèche on public property and ban religious teaching in our public schools on the basis of the separation of Church and State, but have no compunction about promoting and even teaching the religion of environmentalism in our Public schools or passing legislation that requires us to worship at the recycle bin. If recycling is uneconomic, and very probably environmentally unsound, unconditional worship of recycling is tantamount to a religion.
In summary, I personally do not mind if we wish to recover recyclables here and now and are willing to pay the price for it, and I do not care where and how one worships. But I do mind that the environmental activists insist that we are saving the planet from the horrors of Global Warming, or excuse me again, Climate Change by recycling everything in the trash. Uneconomic Recycling, like Ethanol as a fuel for automobiles, is bad for the environment, Period!
P.S. the reason for capitalizing Global Warming and Climate Change is out of respect for the new god.
Environmental activists argue that plastics need to be recycled or banned because they are non-biodegradable, and are made from non-renewable resources. The non-biodegradability argument is that plastics will remain in a landfill forever. Actually, there is little that biodegrades in a modern landfill. We learned this when a Professor of Anthropology from the University of Arizona, who normally digs in ancient man’s discards, decided to dig in modern man’s garbage. He chose a 50 year old landfill and with his students began to dig down. They recorded the dates as they went. Since carbon fourteen would not measure dates within an accuracy of plus or minus 50 years, how did he record dates? Simple, he said, they just read the dates on newspapers that were found. Just as Claude Rains, playing Captin Louis Renault in Casablanca was shocked, shocked to discover that gambling was going on in Rick’s Café, we were all shocked, shocked to find that newspapers do not biodegrade in a landfill. Subsequently the professor reported finding kernels of corn on cobs and meat on chicken thighs.
The fact of the matter is that in modern landfills water is kept out by a combination of water proof liners placed on the bottom and walls of the landfill and then the garbage is covered with soil each day. The result is the microorganisms that could do the biodegrading cannot survive in such a water and oxygen free environment. The good news is that if we ever do run out of non-renewable valuable resources, such as aluminum, glass, steel, plastics and even paper, we will probably dig up the landfills to recover them.
While we are talking about the non-biodegradadability of plastics, it is worthwhile to note that the very microorganisms that can’t biodegrade plastics will mutate to biodegrade them when starved of their favorite easy-to-digest materials. And this technology has been employed to develop bugs that will biodegrade oil spills.
As regards the non-renewable resource argument, it needs also be mentioned that before petrochemical sources for making plastics were discovered, they were made from wood.
Now, as a basic principle, it is important to understand that, other than food waste, virtually any material can be recovered for reuse or made into another use. We have the technology to do this. Even food waste, lawn trimmings and tree limbs can be composted commercially to make humus for nurturing plants. But are the materials we throw out valuable enough to cover the full costs of recycling? Let’s see:
Item Derived From Cost To Value of
Recycle Recyclables
Gold Gold metal Medium Extremely high
Silver Silver metal Medium Very high
Aluminum Bauxite Very High High
Plastics Oil, Gas, Trees High Low
Paper Trees High Low
Glass Sand High Very Low
Steel Iron Ore Medium Low
Food, Etc. Vegatation Medium Zero
As can be seen, silver, gold and aluminum are quite valuable either because the base material is scarce or, as in the case for aluminum, the energy required to convert the raw material, bauxite, to metal is very high. With oil at $85 per barrel, certain complex plastics such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) used in beverage bottles and food containers and polycarbonate used in CDs and bulletproof windows, will have sufficient value to offset the costs of collecting and cleaning the polymers for reuse. The rest of the recyclables are less valuable, and in poor economic times such as these, paper and ordinary plastics packaging may have little or no recycle market value at all. Therefore, recycling must be subsidized by taxes or fees added to garbage pick up fees. What is interesting to note, however, is that the value of paper and plastics as fuel is quite high. Thus, disposal via a waste-to energy makes economic sense even in these distressed economic times.
The questions then are these: (1) is recycling economic, (2) does it save valuable resources and (3) is it good for the environment? The short answers are that, in the case of some materials such as gold, silver and aluminum, it is economic and saves valuable resources, but recycling is not always favorable to the environment.
Recycling can only be economic if the costs to gather and recover the basic material do not exceed the price to be received for the recovered material. The costs associated with recycling include labor, materials, depreciation of equipment and energy. As a result the total cost of recycling reflects directly on the environmental impact. So, if the cost exceeds the market value of the recovered product, recycling that item is probably bad for the environment. This is a good “rule of thumb” to keep in mind.
To understand the economic and environmental impact of recycling, it is useful to trace the trash from our homes or businesses to the places of disposal. If it is to be shipped to a landfill or a waste-to-energy plant, your trash is picked up by a garbage truck at your home or business where, without any separation by you or the garbage man, it is hauled directly to the landfill or waste-to energy plant where it is dumped. The garbage truck then returns to pick up more garbage.
Recyclables, on the other hand, are picked up in a separate truck which uses about the same amount of fuel as the garbage truck. Some places have the driver separate one material from another at the curb. Usually the truck’s engine idles as this task is being completed which can take up to five to ten times that of tossing the garbage into a garbage truck. If the recyclables are not separated at the curb, the truck will then drive to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) where the commingled recyclable materials are dumped onto the floor and moved about via conveyer belts to where they are separated by workers or a machine and then prepared to shipment to an aluminum, steel, glass, paper, plastic producer for manufacturing into a new containers or other useful items.
Every step of the current recycle process consumes fossil-based energy from the diesel fuel for the pick up truck, through the propane fueled front-end loaders that move the garbage, to electric motor driven conveyer belts in the MRF to the diesel fuel of the truck that hauls the separated materials to the plants of the respective users of the recovered items. Consequently, it should be obvious that recycling will use more fossil-based fuel to do all the hauling to and separating at the MRF than just sending the items with ordinary trash to a landfill or waste-to-energy plant. Moreover, it may not be obvious, but with the exception of aluminum, the energy required to process the recycled material to a final product can be as high as the energy required to make the same product from virgin material. So, there is little if any savings to be had there either. If this is so, then the total amount of fossil-derived fuel to recycle is quite a bit more than that required to landfill or to incinerate it.
There is a way that recyclables commingled with the garbage could be processed less expensively. That way is to haul all the trash to a factory where the recyclables can be separated from the trash mechanically. The State of Delaware had such a facility in Newcastle County just south of Wilmington that could process 1000 tons of garbage per day collected from the Wilmington area. The trash was picked up via the normal garbage truck and shipped to the facility where the garbage truck was emptied upon the floor. From there machines would separate the recyclables from the trash. Metals were separated from the trash via magnets in the case of iron and steel, and by eddy currents in the case of aluminum and along with copper were sold. Paper and plastics were separated from the pile by air jets and then compacted into pellets where they were transported via a pipe to an adjacent plant where they became fuel for an electricity generating plant. The glass did not have to be separated by type because all of it was shipped across the Delaware River to New Jersey where an Owens Corning plant used it as a feedstock for the production of fiber glass for insulation. The remaining garbage and lawn trimmings, etc. were sent to four composters in the plant which were about 75 feet in diameter which had large paddles to stir the garbage until it was composted whereupon it was used as humus for the trees and gardens in the State.
This method was deemed economic, but it was it shut down. Why? Well, Owens Corning closed their New Jersey plant, and since it was uneconomic to separate the glasses by type, all the glass was landfilled. New environmental regulations placed upon the electricity plant next door were too expensive, so rather than make the investment required, the owners elected to close the facility and purchase electricity. Fortunately, Delaware was able to sell the pellets to Chester, Pennsylvania who used them as fuel for their waste-to-energy plant.
The coup-de-gras came when one day a State Senator drove past the plant and noted a foul odor, which of course was coming from the composting. As a consequence, the plant was required to place collectors over each of the four composters with a chimney high enough to have the fumes blow into New Jersey with the prevailing winds the cost was too high, so they closed the garbage processing plant permanently.
Since fossil-derived fuel is believed to be the cause of Global Warming, or excuse me, Climate Change, why would one want to undertake uneconomic recycling programs that require fossil fuel and harm the very environment to be saved?
The reason we are willing to be coerced into recycling, and virtually led like sheep to do it, must lie in our concern about our compulsive consumption and how we deal with the trash it creates. While we have no compunction about throwing away the skin of, say, a banana, we feel enormous guilt about throwing away the “skin” (read container) that contains our beverages and other materials. So, we must do something to atone for this sin. The tasks associated with recycling make us feel that we are doing the right thing. An alternate, and environmentally sound approach, would be for communities to provide a person from the clergy, who upon hearing our confessions, could absolve us of the sin of being a wasteful consumer.
It fascinates me that we have those in this country who want to remove the word God in the Pledge to Allegiance, will not permit a Crèche on public property and ban religious teaching in our public schools on the basis of the separation of Church and State, but have no compunction about promoting and even teaching the religion of environmentalism in our Public schools or passing legislation that requires us to worship at the recycle bin. If recycling is uneconomic, and very probably environmentally unsound, unconditional worship of recycling is tantamount to a religion.
In summary, I personally do not mind if we wish to recover recyclables here and now and are willing to pay the price for it, and I do not care where and how one worships. But I do mind that the environmental activists insist that we are saving the planet from the horrors of Global Warming, or excuse me again, Climate Change by recycling everything in the trash. Uneconomic Recycling, like Ethanol as a fuel for automobiles, is bad for the environment, Period!
P.S. the reason for capitalizing Global Warming and Climate Change is out of respect for the new god.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Perspective: On Global Warming
In ancient days phenomena that occurred naturally that was not understood, such as thunder and lightening, were believed to be the gods’ expressing their anger at something mankind had caused, and the god’s had to be assuaged. The priests of the day would naturally decide what the gods’ required, and that normally would be a sacrifice. In the very early days that required a human sacrifice. Thus, the Mayans would select a virgin girl, and the Israelites would demand the first born son. Later the gods’ were believed to be satisfied with animals. Gradually it dawned on humans that no matter what they sacrificed, the gods were not satisfied. Still later it dawned on humans that thunder and lightening and such were natural occurrences with the gods having nothing to do with day-to-day interference, and the sacrifices were terminated.
In our modern twenty first century amazingly the ancient practice continues, only this time it is alleged that manmade Global Warming is making the gods angry. And just like in the dark ages, the new priests, e.g., environmentalists, and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, also believe that sacrifices must be made. These take the form of converting food to fuel, artificially increasing the price of energy via “cap and trade” and subsidizing $ 60,000 automobiles that will need their batteries recharged for eight hours every 100 miles.
Now, long before man came into being upon this planet, there have been periods of intermittent global warming and global cooling. This has been recorded in the rocks and ice formations including major glaziers that formed the Great Lakes. But this neither fazes nor diverts the attention of the new priests. All the proof that is needed to blame mankind for global warming is that we started to burn fossil fuels, other than trees, about 150 years ago. And mankind must be punished! Moreover, the only way the environmentalist gods will be satisfied is if we all go back to the halcyon days of the horse and buggy, the outdoors toilet and grow our own food for a vegan diet.
So, what are we talking about regarding global warming? The idea is that gases in the atmosphere act as glass does in a greenhouse. The sun’s rays pass through the glass in the green house and are essentially reflected back into the greenhouse, thus heating it up. Likewise, atmospheric gasses performing as the glass, allow the rays to pass through, and then “trap” the rays thus heating up the earth.
The main atmospheric gases are water vapor (clouds), methane and carbon dioxide. All are naturally occurring gases. Water vapor comes from water evaporating from rivers, lakes and oceans. Methane comes from anything that is composted and from cattle’s cud and flatulation. It is also trapped in the ocean at great depths and in rock formations deep inside the earth. Carbon dioxide comes from any carbon substance that is incinerated or decomposes. Carbon dioxide is created by burning or composting anything that contains carbon. The main sources include wood, coal, oil, methane, vegetation and animal carcasses. Moreover, it is particularly interesting to note that of the three main gases, carbon dioxide is the least effective greenhouse gas. Methane and water have as much as ten times the impact as that of carbon dioxide. In truth, we really have no idea how many variables impact the environment on this planet. The sun’s effect itself remains a mystery. With a situation so complex it is amazing that we would leap from the myriad of hypotheses possible to the theory that the warming is man made.
Finally, we are told over and over that the amount of fossil fuels that are available will only last about 100 years at the current rate of global consumption, but we are not told how long it will take for the global warming to make the planet uninhabitable for humans and animals. I am going to take a wild guess and say that it is between one thousand and one million years. So, what are we worried about? It would appear that in the subsequent centuries after depletion of fossil fuel reserves, natural forces, e.g. vegetation via photosynthesis, will be able to absorb any excess carbon dioxide that man has created.
When you consider the real and immediate problems that mankind faces on this planet such as the digital explosion replacing jobs at mach speed, economic globalization gobbling up natural resources, inadequate food supplies looming as well as worldwide terrorism, why are we devoting any time at all trying to deal with the theory of manmade global warming?
What is so especially galling is that these new “priests” have our present Administration hamstrung. At a time when we desperately need an energy policy that will provide low cost and long lasting supplies of energy for our industries and our citizens, this Administration saddles developers of our indigenous energy supplies with excessive regulations and bureaucratic red tape. Meanwhile we are sitting on the world’s largest supply of fossil fuels with the best technology for minimizing the environmental impact of their use. Instead we import oil from our enemies and weaken the dollar. Most despicable, this is a policy the President could unilaterally reverse now!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Perspective: Presidential Candidates Should State Clearly What They Would Do they First Day In Office
To answer that question, we need to decide what exactly is the most important problem the country faces. A brief list of problems includes:
How to end the wars in the middle east
How to manage the debt
How to create jobs
Of these, only the third, “how to create jobs”, should be given priority at this time. It requires immediate attention, whereas the other two can be dealt with in due time. The difficulty is that the present Administration has no clue as to what is causing this weak jobless economy. But the answer is not complex. It is this Administration and its penchant for increasing taxes and adding more and more regulations on US businesses that has caused the business atmosphere to be so murky and uncertain that our entrepreneurs are frozen into inaction. What is required is strong leadership from the President to encourage entrepreneurs to free the trillions of dollars of capital that are on the sidelines waiting to be invested in businesses that will create jobs.
It is amazing how easy it would be to reduce the uncertainty. The government’s plans and/or lack thereof, has destroyed job creation and weakened the dollar. What is sad is that the President has the power under the Constitution and present law to take actions unilaterally to clarify and remove the uncertainty.
Accordingly a presidential candidate should boldly and consistently state that as President he/she would, within the first hour after inauguration, implement the following list of actions, effective at once.
Remove all restrictions on drilling and the development of our indigenous fossil fuel
Resources to get us off of foreign oil which will strengthen the dollar.
Place a moratorium on all regulations which would increase the price of energy, especially those related to so-called man-made global warming.
Dismiss all Czars and shut down their organizations that have anything to do with unduly regulating businesses, especially those that have to do with determining the remuneration of business executives.
Place a five year moratorium on implementation of the new regulations which might derive from Obamacare
Remove or freeze the implementation of all US Government regulations that require the use of agriculture based fuels, e.g. ethanol, biofuels, etc.
Move to implement all outstanding and stalled trade agreements.
Instruct the Secretary of Commerce that the major tasks of that Commerce Department are: (1) to take every action to level the playing field for our manufactures so they can compete globally with China, India, Brazil and others, (2) to immediately develop a package of legislation that will permit US industrialists to become totally competitive with foreign competitors who have access to special financial aid from global competitive countries, (3) demand that the Secretary report progress to the President on a daily basis.
Then, on the second day and from the Oval Office with the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense and the Attorney General by his/her side, the President should state publicly and unequivocally that any new taxes that thwart capitalists from investing in the United States will be vetoed. That he/she will lobby Congress and use the Bully Pulpit to implement new legislation that makes US capitalists able to compete fully with China, India, Brazil and other global competitors. Then as Commander in Chief, he/she should state that the primary task of the military is to develop and enhance the techniques to find, chase down and capture or kill all terrorists, and that the military should be modified to accomplish this objective and reduced in size in accordance with the need to satisfy current obligations. Finally, he/she should state that the Attorney General has been instructed that, starting at once, all terrorists captured on foreign soil will be sent to Guitanimo and tried by the military as enemy combatants
As important as the need to get our debt under control is, it is clear that there is no mood in the country, and the Congress lacks the will, to rein in the entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. So, let these alone for now and stop wasting time. Rather, depend upon the development of a robust economy, with high employment and attendant taxes, derived from the employed, to pay for the costs of these programs. After the economy is humming again, then maybe some progress can be made to control the aforementioned entitlement programs.
Now, if our republican presidential candidates would adopt this message right now and talk constantly about the key parts of it, and especially explain that he/she, as President, would be empowered to take these actions the very day he/she is inaugurated, then we would have a chance to beat this “non-leading non-presidential” President..
How to end the wars in the middle east
How to manage the debt
How to create jobs
Of these, only the third, “how to create jobs”, should be given priority at this time. It requires immediate attention, whereas the other two can be dealt with in due time. The difficulty is that the present Administration has no clue as to what is causing this weak jobless economy. But the answer is not complex. It is this Administration and its penchant for increasing taxes and adding more and more regulations on US businesses that has caused the business atmosphere to be so murky and uncertain that our entrepreneurs are frozen into inaction. What is required is strong leadership from the President to encourage entrepreneurs to free the trillions of dollars of capital that are on the sidelines waiting to be invested in businesses that will create jobs.
It is amazing how easy it would be to reduce the uncertainty. The government’s plans and/or lack thereof, has destroyed job creation and weakened the dollar. What is sad is that the President has the power under the Constitution and present law to take actions unilaterally to clarify and remove the uncertainty.
Accordingly a presidential candidate should boldly and consistently state that as President he/she would, within the first hour after inauguration, implement the following list of actions, effective at once.
Remove all restrictions on drilling and the development of our indigenous fossil fuel
Resources to get us off of foreign oil which will strengthen the dollar.
Place a moratorium on all regulations which would increase the price of energy, especially those related to so-called man-made global warming.
Dismiss all Czars and shut down their organizations that have anything to do with unduly regulating businesses, especially those that have to do with determining the remuneration of business executives.
Place a five year moratorium on implementation of the new regulations which might derive from Obamacare
Remove or freeze the implementation of all US Government regulations that require the use of agriculture based fuels, e.g. ethanol, biofuels, etc.
Move to implement all outstanding and stalled trade agreements.
Instruct the Secretary of Commerce that the major tasks of that Commerce Department are: (1) to take every action to level the playing field for our manufactures so they can compete globally with China, India, Brazil and others, (2) to immediately develop a package of legislation that will permit US industrialists to become totally competitive with foreign competitors who have access to special financial aid from global competitive countries, (3) demand that the Secretary report progress to the President on a daily basis.
Then, on the second day and from the Oval Office with the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense and the Attorney General by his/her side, the President should state publicly and unequivocally that any new taxes that thwart capitalists from investing in the United States will be vetoed. That he/she will lobby Congress and use the Bully Pulpit to implement new legislation that makes US capitalists able to compete fully with China, India, Brazil and other global competitors. Then as Commander in Chief, he/she should state that the primary task of the military is to develop and enhance the techniques to find, chase down and capture or kill all terrorists, and that the military should be modified to accomplish this objective and reduced in size in accordance with the need to satisfy current obligations. Finally, he/she should state that the Attorney General has been instructed that, starting at once, all terrorists captured on foreign soil will be sent to Guitanimo and tried by the military as enemy combatants
As important as the need to get our debt under control is, it is clear that there is no mood in the country, and the Congress lacks the will, to rein in the entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. So, let these alone for now and stop wasting time. Rather, depend upon the development of a robust economy, with high employment and attendant taxes, derived from the employed, to pay for the costs of these programs. After the economy is humming again, then maybe some progress can be made to control the aforementioned entitlement programs.
Now, if our republican presidential candidates would adopt this message right now and talk constantly about the key parts of it, and especially explain that he/she, as President, would be empowered to take these actions the very day he/she is inaugurated, then we would have a chance to beat this “non-leading non-presidential” President..
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Perspective: What Stymies Job Creation
I swear it would take a colonoscopist to find the heads of our government! The economy is stagnating, the true jobless rate still hovers around 15%, and there are stories after stories of persons 50 and above who have been diligently searching for jobs for a year or more. And, with the exception of those who majored in science or engineering, it is a rare college graduate who has found a job in the field of their major.
Meanwhile, the business press is full of stories of companies being lured to other countries with all kinds of incentives while there are virtually no incentives offered by the United States. In fact we have the second highest tax rate in the industrial world. It is an outrage and embarrassment that the United States at this moment is second from the top of the least business-friendly countries in the industrial world. Moreover, our government does everything you can think of to increase uncertainty for the investor for whom uncertainty is anathema. In fact, both our President and democrat members of our Congress berate industrialists at every turn. Under these conditions investors have reasons to do nothing. That is what they are doing, NOTHING, while trillions of dollars of capital sit on the sidelines.
A new book entitled, “Make It in America” by Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and CEO Of The Dow Chemical Corporation, spells out the problem and offers solutions as he makes the case for “Re-inventing the Economy”. I recommend this book because the author states clearly what US manufacturing is up against in this new global economy. Global competitors offer manufacturing businesses incentives such as free land, low tax rates, rapid right offs, sharing in the capital investment required, long term loans at low fixed interest rates and clear and long-term regulations that can be counted upon. The US offers none of these. This is terrible, because it is not cheap labor that is driving companies to locate in foreign countries. US labor is very efficient and quite often their productivity offsets the low cost of foreign labor.
At the very beginning of his book Liveris describes a situation that should be so embarrassing to our leaders, that each should publicly apologize and volunteer to leave office at once. My readers are aware of Amazon’s electronic book, Kindle, invented a mere four years ago. It and its competitive counterparts will doubtless destroy the entire book industry from publisher to book printers to book stores to our libraries themselves thus eliminating thousands of jobs. Already Amazon is selling more down-loadable books than paper ones, and Borders has declared bankruptcy. You would have thought that this might have caught the attention of our leaders and the Media who might have wanted to know that thousands of jobs are in jeopardy because of some new-fangled device. Maybe they might even have wondered where the new electronic book would be manufactured.
Liveris tells us that the Kindle was created in a secret lab in Silicon Valley in 2007. The key was an innovative electronic ink, which, unlike the pixels of computer screens, needs no illumination. Thus the simulated printed page can be read in direct sunlight. Amazon partnered with a company in Massachusetts called E-Ink which was started by researchers at MIT, but E-Link did not have the technology to build the screen similar to that used for LCD television screens because the manufacture of such television screens had moved overseas.
So, when Amazon could not, repeat could not, find a manufacturer located in the United States. They settled on Taiwan. The Taiwan Company subsequently bought E-Link and moved it from the US to Taiwan.
You got it! Yes, a device that will replace thousands of United States jobs associated with the cutting of trees for pulp, making pulp to paper, printing the paper with ink made in the US, binding the books, selling the books and placing them in physical libraries all in the USA, will be replaced by a product made in Taiwan and sold to US readers who will download books from the comfort of their homes.
Interestingly, the Department of Commerce has a mission statement which says in part: “To promote Job Creation by promoting U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace”. Does anyone recall reading anywhere that someone from this Department has the responsibility to determine what our country has to do to enable our capitalists to become competitive in the new global economy! What is the sense of having an expensive Department to promote global commerce and job creation if they don’t know about this issue, don’t know what to do, or worse, much worse, don’t care?
If you are not absolutely outraged by this, you should be. All of our “so-called” leaders had to do was work with Amazon to find a way to make manufacture of the Kindle economically feasible in the United States. That way at least some jobs would still be in this country. BUT NO !!!
In this horrible economic climate, our leaders are spending all of their time fussing about the out-of -control entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, universally accepted as the cause of our sky-rocketing debt. The Republican plan, proposed by Representative Paul Ryan, is already being demagogued by the President and the Democrats. Have you seen that outrageous ad showing a look-a-like Paul Ryan pushing an old woman in a wheel chair over a cliff? Compare that to the blast Sara Palin received when she properly noted that Obamacare would require “death panels”. This is the third time we have seen Republican efforts to reign in entitlements demagogued by the Democrats. The first was in the nineties when the Republicans proposed to slow the growth of Medicare. The second was in 2005 when George W. Bush proposed a plan to control Social Security, and now the Ryan plan.
Nothing meaningful is going to be done about entitlements with this democrat in the Whitehouse and a democrat controlled Senate who both think that the answer is to tax the rich. Hasn’t anyone noticed that the rich are leaving the country to take their businesses overseas to “business friendly” countries such as China, Brazil, South Korea, and even Europe. Without capital investment in the United States, only made possible by the so-called rich, there will be no jobs for ordinary US citizen tax payers. Without jobs they will not be paying taxes; therefore, there will be no increased revenue for the government to offset the cost of the entrenched entitlements.
The only answer is for our government to focus its undivided attention to create jobs in America by:
Putting in place programs that will be supportive of manufacturing ventures that will be competitive with those countries that have been enticing and continue to entice our entrepreneurs to leave the United States.
Reduce taxes and regulations on private enterprise to global competitive levels
Make them permanent so that investors can properly calculate the risks of making long term investments in the United States.
This must be done at once! Any elected official who does not understand this and have it as a top priority, must be removed from office as soon as possible.
.
Meanwhile, the business press is full of stories of companies being lured to other countries with all kinds of incentives while there are virtually no incentives offered by the United States. In fact we have the second highest tax rate in the industrial world. It is an outrage and embarrassment that the United States at this moment is second from the top of the least business-friendly countries in the industrial world. Moreover, our government does everything you can think of to increase uncertainty for the investor for whom uncertainty is anathema. In fact, both our President and democrat members of our Congress berate industrialists at every turn. Under these conditions investors have reasons to do nothing. That is what they are doing, NOTHING, while trillions of dollars of capital sit on the sidelines.
A new book entitled, “Make It in America” by Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and CEO Of The Dow Chemical Corporation, spells out the problem and offers solutions as he makes the case for “Re-inventing the Economy”. I recommend this book because the author states clearly what US manufacturing is up against in this new global economy. Global competitors offer manufacturing businesses incentives such as free land, low tax rates, rapid right offs, sharing in the capital investment required, long term loans at low fixed interest rates and clear and long-term regulations that can be counted upon. The US offers none of these. This is terrible, because it is not cheap labor that is driving companies to locate in foreign countries. US labor is very efficient and quite often their productivity offsets the low cost of foreign labor.
At the very beginning of his book Liveris describes a situation that should be so embarrassing to our leaders, that each should publicly apologize and volunteer to leave office at once. My readers are aware of Amazon’s electronic book, Kindle, invented a mere four years ago. It and its competitive counterparts will doubtless destroy the entire book industry from publisher to book printers to book stores to our libraries themselves thus eliminating thousands of jobs. Already Amazon is selling more down-loadable books than paper ones, and Borders has declared bankruptcy. You would have thought that this might have caught the attention of our leaders and the Media who might have wanted to know that thousands of jobs are in jeopardy because of some new-fangled device. Maybe they might even have wondered where the new electronic book would be manufactured.
Liveris tells us that the Kindle was created in a secret lab in Silicon Valley in 2007. The key was an innovative electronic ink, which, unlike the pixels of computer screens, needs no illumination. Thus the simulated printed page can be read in direct sunlight. Amazon partnered with a company in Massachusetts called E-Ink which was started by researchers at MIT, but E-Link did not have the technology to build the screen similar to that used for LCD television screens because the manufacture of such television screens had moved overseas.
So, when Amazon could not, repeat could not, find a manufacturer located in the United States. They settled on Taiwan. The Taiwan Company subsequently bought E-Link and moved it from the US to Taiwan.
You got it! Yes, a device that will replace thousands of United States jobs associated with the cutting of trees for pulp, making pulp to paper, printing the paper with ink made in the US, binding the books, selling the books and placing them in physical libraries all in the USA, will be replaced by a product made in Taiwan and sold to US readers who will download books from the comfort of their homes.
Interestingly, the Department of Commerce has a mission statement which says in part: “To promote Job Creation by promoting U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace”. Does anyone recall reading anywhere that someone from this Department has the responsibility to determine what our country has to do to enable our capitalists to become competitive in the new global economy! What is the sense of having an expensive Department to promote global commerce and job creation if they don’t know about this issue, don’t know what to do, or worse, much worse, don’t care?
If you are not absolutely outraged by this, you should be. All of our “so-called” leaders had to do was work with Amazon to find a way to make manufacture of the Kindle economically feasible in the United States. That way at least some jobs would still be in this country. BUT NO !!!
In this horrible economic climate, our leaders are spending all of their time fussing about the out-of -control entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, universally accepted as the cause of our sky-rocketing debt. The Republican plan, proposed by Representative Paul Ryan, is already being demagogued by the President and the Democrats. Have you seen that outrageous ad showing a look-a-like Paul Ryan pushing an old woman in a wheel chair over a cliff? Compare that to the blast Sara Palin received when she properly noted that Obamacare would require “death panels”. This is the third time we have seen Republican efforts to reign in entitlements demagogued by the Democrats. The first was in the nineties when the Republicans proposed to slow the growth of Medicare. The second was in 2005 when George W. Bush proposed a plan to control Social Security, and now the Ryan plan.
Nothing meaningful is going to be done about entitlements with this democrat in the Whitehouse and a democrat controlled Senate who both think that the answer is to tax the rich. Hasn’t anyone noticed that the rich are leaving the country to take their businesses overseas to “business friendly” countries such as China, Brazil, South Korea, and even Europe. Without capital investment in the United States, only made possible by the so-called rich, there will be no jobs for ordinary US citizen tax payers. Without jobs they will not be paying taxes; therefore, there will be no increased revenue for the government to offset the cost of the entrenched entitlements.
The only answer is for our government to focus its undivided attention to create jobs in America by:
Putting in place programs that will be supportive of manufacturing ventures that will be competitive with those countries that have been enticing and continue to entice our entrepreneurs to leave the United States.
Reduce taxes and regulations on private enterprise to global competitive levels
Make them permanent so that investors can properly calculate the risks of making long term investments in the United States.
This must be done at once! Any elected official who does not understand this and have it as a top priority, must be removed from office as soon as possible.
.
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