No Words (Okay, really a lot of words)

I had more to discuss about economics and domestic politics, but I came across an article that has me thinking in a rather different direction.


Understand, please.  I have a healthy skepticism towards anyone who claims that God is on their side.  It seems to me that the people who are most certain that they know what God wants, are generally the ones who have the least understanding.  They're more likely to be hearing what they want to hear and claiming it's God's voice.  And when that happens, there's a very real danger.  I remember reading about a historical battle during the Crusades.  The Knights Templar were certain God was on their side, and then went and did some really stupid things.  Like attempting to cross a desert without enough water, while engaged with Saladin no less.  If history has proven anything, it's that God (if you believe there is one) favors people who use the brains He gave them. 


I don't claim I know what God wants, it'd be kind of silly to do so when I just said I'm skeptical of those who do.  Some days I'm not even sure He exists.  Yet I think you can kind of tell what's more or less likely to be inspired by that sense of other, versus self-serving beliefs that allow us to justify what we want. 


I think that God would direct us towards being more compassionate, more open.  Less judgmental.  Less self-centered.  That we should think more of others, see them as individuals worthy of our respect. 


And that claims which support our self interests (i.e. encourage us to be more judgmental, more superior than others, or that justify being selfish and self-centered) are probably just us justifying the views we want to hear and claiming it has God's approval.


Which is why, uncomfortable as I am with using harsh and judgmental religious language, the only words I have for ISIS here is "Blasphemous" and "Evil".


To claim that God wants you to do this!?!  No.  Hell no.  This is so far from God that I have no words.


Honestly, it makes me want to join up and fight against ISIS right here and now.  Except...


Well, that's an entirely different topic. 


Suffice to say that I'm suddenly reminded that there are some very, very bad things out there in the world.  To be honest, it's not just ISIS.  There's conflict and violence all over the world, some of it just as ugly.  Human trafficking, child soldiers, and more.


I don't feel comfortable shrugging and pretending there's nothing going on, or that we're unable to do anything about it.  Don't want to just link to an article like that and say 'how horrible', so all my friends on Facebook can chime in and agree.


But what?

So What Can We Do?

A post or two ago, I was discussing the tragedy of poverty.  You could probably add 'and inequality' to that, too.  But I didn't go so far as to suggest a solution, in part because a segment of our society immediately thinks 'wealth distribution!!!' and is already prepared to reject anything you propose.

Which is why I'm not yet going to propose anything here.  I just wanted to throw out a few more ideas for consideration.

I recently read a book about the oil industry, and I want to explore the concept of 'rents' a little more.  In this case, the rents aren't what you are paying to stay in your home.  It has to do with the difference between the basic costs of producing a product, and the profit you make when you sell that product on the market. 

With oil, the rents can be pretty high...once you've found oil and paid for the basic infrastructure the basic costs for producing a particular gallon of oil aren't that high.  (The costs are tied in with upgrading/improving infrastructure and paying to explore for more oil-producing locations.  That exploration can be pretty expensive, too.)

Demand, on the other hand, IS high.  High enough that the price per a gallon of oil is significantly higher than the production cost.  So someone (or rather someones) can make a pretty good profit off of it.

So where does that profit go? 

When oil first started to become big, a lot of it went to the businesses that found the oil in the first place.  The ones that spent money drilling holes, built up the infrastructure, etc.

But nationalism and anti-colonialism became a big deal shortly after oil became so important.  And a lot of countries felt like the foreign oil companies were taking away their resources and making a profit off of it.  One that came at their expense, and left them poor.  (I have to wonder if the story would have been different if the oil companies had been local...if the profit had stayed within the country, albeit in private hands, would there have been such outrage?) 

Anyways...that led to a push by the oil producing countries to gain a portion of the rents.  Now, most conservative capitalists grew upset by this, because those nations did it by nationalizing company oil resources.  They will point out that most state run oil companies stopped producing as much revenue...they let the infrastructure wear out, didn't invest in upgrades, etc.  But the heart of the issue wasn't capitalist/socialist...it was about colonialism.  Foreign companies coming into a country, making sweetheart deals at the host nations expense, and making a lot of money off of it.  (I am oversimplifying this, but I want to highlight why an oil producing nation would feel they have a claim on part of those profits.  There have been consequences to this, but I'll go into that elsewhere.)

There are two other major interests in these rents.  First - consumers.  We are all, to one extent or another, consumers of oil.  Driving to work, using goods that were driven to us, buying product shipped overseas...we all consume oil.  And the cheaper it is, the easier it is on us.  Goods don't cost as much to ship, we don't have to budget as much of our income to gas, etc.

The final one, and the one you could argue has the least rights to these 'rents', are oil consuming nations.  They can raise tariffs and taxes on oil and gain some portion of those rents.  Of course, although they may not be entitled to the 'rent'...they may have a right to use tariffs and taxes to influence consumer incentives.  That is, making gas artificially more expensive can also encourage less usage...and can make alternative energy sources more competitive.

I just listed four different groups who want a portion of the rents.  So who deserves it, and how much of it should they get?

This is one area where self-interest often determines the answer.  Self-interest and politics, of course.  I will say, however, that all groups can cause problems if they don't feel they are given a fair share here.

As most economists/capitalists would argue, companies won't fund the expensive oil exploration process if they weren't able to get a significant profit off of it.  Nor would they continue to upgrade or improve an oil producing plant.

Nations, as recent history shows, can capitalize on nationalist sentiment to take over.

Consumers...well, if you've heard the term 'oil choke price' it gives you a sense of what can go wrong when oil is too expensive.  Some of it is basic economics.  When gas costs too much, alternative fuels become more viable.  More efficient cars make more sense.  Biking to work makes more sense.  So if oil becomes too expensive it can lose most of it's customers.  But the 'oil choke collar' has other affects, because the more consumers have to spend on gas the less they have to spend elsewhere.  This includes more than just the cost of filling up your tank...it also includes the price increases for all products that are shipped via oil fueled transportation.  The price of food goes up, because it costs more to ship it to your local store.  The price of everything goes up, for the same reason.

And as for oil-consuming nations, in some ways purchasing oil evokes the same fears the oil-producing nations had when their industries were run by foreign companies.  Oil consuming nations are basically importing oil, and putting money in the pockets of other nations...whether their foreign businesses or the state-run governments themselves.  How much trouble an oil-consuming nation can cause probably has more to do with how interested they are in pushing for energy alternatives.

The dynamics between these different groups fall under one of my favorite topics - the social science theory behind social dilemmas. 

My Day Job

This week has been a little busy.  We had a Physical Inventory for my area...so I spent most of the week making sure we processed as much product out of inventory as possible, and tried my best to double check any questionable issues.

See, when you move inventory in a system (like SAP) sometimes the physical movement doesn't correspond to what we say we did in SAP.  That means that there's a risk that material will end up in the wrong location...either our system believes it is there when it isn't, or it is physically there even though our system didn't expect it.  So about once a year we have to check every single part in the building.  Well, every single part that is in our inventory - since we're a returns center, we have a stream of 'to be processed' material from our customers that is not yet in inventory.  We don't actually have to break down and process those for this annual check.

Again, since we're a returns center, we're not supposed to have a lot of inventory on hand.  Most of it is received in and processed out right away. 

Anyways, I've been a little busy this week.  It went fairly well, which was good.  My first time in charge for one of these, too.  (I've been with this company for a couple of years now, but for all the previous ones I was at our distribution center where inventory checks are significantly different.  Plus with three different shifts and multiple departments you can't really pin down discrepencies to any one supervisor.  You can figure out which associate miscounted, overpicked or underpicked or put material to the wrong location incorrectly, sure.  Supervisors can discuss ways of creating a better system.  Re-training if needed, deciding to use internal employees instead of hiring contract labor, things like that...but it's different when you're the only supervisor for a small single shift.)

Then yesterday I took my Little (from Big Brothers, Big Sisters) to Stitches.  A knitting/crocheting expo in Schaumberg.  She seemed to like it, and we made a day of it in the Chicago/Schaumberg area.  Visited the Shedd Aquarium, had pizza at a restaurant she likes, etc.  We checked out the new public bikes that you can borrow to ride around the museum area.  Those might be worth using if we make another day trip.

So what with one thing and another, I haven't had the time to follow up on my current topic thread.  I'll remedy that today, at least a little bit.  Probably not everything though.

I Am A Special Snowflake. :)

This article covers the issue I want to explore soon, but I have a couple of other topics I wanted to discuss first.

First is another bit of human nature.  I think most of us understand that if you have a million dollars and decide to give it to needy people, that you could give a million people $1 each and make absolutely no difference in their life.  For this topic, I realized that even though I'm mostly secular I will pretty much have todraw on the Catholic upbringing I grew up with.  We all know that Jesus told us to help our fellow person.  To give the shirt off our backs if need be.  That it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a came to get through a needle's eye. (And even if the 'needle's eye' refers to the entrance to a temple instead of an actual needle's eye, it's still a very challenging task.) 

Yet there's a part of all of us that realizes "if I truly gave up everything in order to help others, I would have nothing and there would still be too many people who also have nothing." 

I'm making the point because instead of thinking hard about how we can do both, I think most of us learn to harden our hearts and ignore the implicit challenge. We may give a tithe to our churches, donate to a charity, and do good works but most of the time it's only if we can afford it and not to the extent of giving the shirt off our backs. 

We give what we can tolerate, rather than give in this crazy manner as asked in the Bible.  And we absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human being.  Leave it up to the churches, or the state, or whoever it is that we're giving our money to.  That's why we gave them the money in the first place.

"The poor will always be with us" and "I am not my brother's keeper."

As a child, my school had little posters throughout the building.  A drawing of a young boy and underneath it said "I know I'm somebody because God don't make no junk."  This brings to mind a paradox, a way of looking at the world that I find dizzyingly incomprehensible.  If we all are something amazing, all children of God, how can we all be special at the same time?  If everyone is special...nobody is special.  Like the cynical saying "We are all special snowflakes." Each one may be uniquely amazing if you look at them individually (I have a book with amazing photographs of individual snowflakes) but when you put it together you just get - snow.

This is the part that boggles my mind, and I have to marvel at anyone with the understanding to really get it.  What if we said that without the cynicism?  What if we considered each and every one of us a special snowflake, worthy of being photographed and placed in a book like the one I just mentioned?  What if that was true of everybody. The person who is bagging your groceries.  The person sweeping the floor.  The waiter or waitress serving you dinner.  The stock broker. The politician. The lobbyist.  The CEO. The union worker.

The idiot. The genius. The jerk. The b****. The thug. The fat cat. The stud. The slut. The helpless. The clingy.  The needy. The rich. The poor.

Every dismissive thought, every time we simplify someone into a word, we are disrespecting the complex and wondrous artistry that makes every single one of us the unique person we are.

To bring this back to my starting point - every time someone is unable to develop to their full potential it is a tragedy.  Poverty is a tragedy. A loss.  We have no idea how many Einsteins, Rembrandts, Da Vincis, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Abraham Lincolns were out there yet unable to provide their unique contribution.

Changing that isn't easy, and isn't just a matter of redistributing wealth.  I think it's a worthy goal, though.