We are all Egyptians now

The Tahrir Square uprising “has nothing to do with left or right,” said Dina Shehata, a researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “It is about young people rebelling against a regime that has stifled all channels for their upward mobility. They want to shape their own destiny, and they want social justice” from a system in which a few people have gotten fantastically rich, in giant villas, and everyone else has stagnated.  Thomas Friedman - NYT

We have an inequality index that can go head to head with Egypt’s. Of course food’s cheaper here, so no one’s in the streets. Thomas Geoghegan, Chicago labor lawyer - NYT

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No matter how sympathetic we are with their struggle, most of us following the events in Egypt probably see it as something very foreign: an exotically attired, dark skinned people, speaking heavily accented English in a far off land, rebelling against the corrupt regime of an aging dictator, something to which we can only identify with by an intensely imaginative use of our powers of empathy, seeing few similarities with our own lives and condition. Wrong. Thomas Friedman, of all people, brought it all closer to home for me.

I am no a fan of Friedman's, but the insight he gave me today was worth reading through a ton of his previous twaddle: "young people rebelling against a regime that has stifled all channels for their upward mobility" and "a system in which a few people have gotten fantastically rich, in giant villas, and everyone else has stagnated", sounded disturbingly familiar to me. It reminded me of many developed countries, but especially the USA. Reading further in the same online edition of the New York Times, I came upon the next quote by a Chicago labor lawyer, Thomas Geoghegan, "We have an inequality index that can go head to head with Egypt’s. Of course food’s cheaper here, so no one’s in the streets." Suddenly Cairo seemed much closer to home.

There is one of those wonderful Spanish sayings which goes, "when you see your neighbor's beard on fire, put your whiskers to soak". The domestic peace of the the "world's greatest democracy" could be hanging on the price of America's food and gasoline.    I was also struck by another common factor, the similar declining value of a university education:  all these revolts began when a Tunisian university graduate, unable to find work in any profession in consonance with his education and forced to earn his living peddling vegetables from an illegal pushcart, set himself on fire in protest.  His suicide struck a chord in the entire Arab world and maybe, deep down, farther afield as well.

In a globalized economy, everyone is exposed to the same general forces.  We are ruled by the "butterfly effect" and the butterflies are flapping their little hearts out all over the world today. Some countries and some people are much more vulnerable than others and that makes them more immediately and visibly victims to the forces that are also bending millions of people's lives more subtly and more gradually out of shape in more powerful, richer and more dynamic economies.

With every day that passes it seems clearer to me that growing social and economic inequality is the most dangerous wild card in the world's deck and that within a decade, or perhaps much less, what is happening in Egypt today will be seen as more than the beginning of a revolution in the Arab world,or in dictatorships, but a harbinger of even wider disturbances in places you might least suspect. DS

Working the basics

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It has been my experience that one of the most useful ways of taking apart a problem is to start with the simplest, most obvious things. Nothing is too obvious and humble not to be worth intense examination and rumination, till it yields its substance. Sherlock Holmes did little else

Conclusions arrived at trying to make sense of the most basic and obvious facts are solid and difficult for sophists to refute.

So If we are going to follow Confucius's advice and "rectify names" and reinvigorate our vocabulary we probably should start by having a clear idea of the most basic truths about our species.

For example:

Human beings are made up of about 66% water, which is considerably less than American beer, but still quite a lot. Sweating and peeing take their daily toll, so that water lost must be replaced: expert opinion has it that,

To maintain a high level of health and efficiency even in ideal environments, a minimum of two quarts of clean water per day per person is the generally accepted rule of thumb. In very hot or cold or very dry environments, or if you are physically active, two quarts of water a day may not be enough to sustain life over a period of days or weeks.

I think its important to meditate on that passage, because as the BBC says,

Two-fifths of the world's people already face serious shortages, and water-borne diseases fill half its hospital beds. People in rich countries use 10 times more water than those in poor ones. The present is dire: the future looks so grim it must be entirely unmanageable. Cut it how you will, the picture that emerges from today's data and tomorrow's forecasts is so complex and appalling it can leave you feeling powerless. The world cannot increase its supply of fresh water: all it can do is change the way it uses it. Its population is going to go on increasing for some time before there is any prospect it will stabilize.(...) Because the world's water supply is finite, most of life's other necessities are finite as well. In China it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to grow one tonne of wheat. If we do not learn to live within our aqueous means, we shall go hungry as well as thirsty. A world where consumption was a means to survival, not an economic end in itself, would have enough water to go round. And polluted, inadequate water might kill its children a little more slowly. (emphasis mine)

And after water comes food. As I'm sure you have read, there is a severe world food shortage at the moment. Here is how Caritas describes it:

Across the developing world there are only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left and grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s. The UN World Food Programme has issued an urgent appeal for $500 million to respond to the dramatic increase in food and fuel prices. Rioting in response to massive food price increases has broken out in countries as diverse as Egypt, Bolivia, Indonesia and Senegal. Violent unrest in Haiti spread to the capital after protesters stormed the presidential palace last week, demanding that the government lift taxes on rice and beans. At least five people were killed . In a country where 80% of people earn less than £1 a day, the price of basic foodstuffs has soared by more than 50% since last year. Only Somali and Afghanistan have a higher per capita daily deficit in calorie intake than Haiti. The food crisis in Haiti is so intense that there is a real danger that the government and United Nations forces will not be able to maintain security if food aid is not stepped up in the very near future. Prospery Raymond, the Christian Aid country representative, said: "The country is at the beginning of a major crisis and there is a real risk of more political violence." He said: "A major contributing factor to the current food shortages are the neo-liberal economic policies that have been required by donor countries." (emphasis mine)

Of course, not everybody is complaining. Here is how "The Street" sees it:

With about 40% of the world's agricultural land seriously degraded and oil prices at record levels, prices of feed poultry and dairy cows are causing prices of wheat, soybean and maize to skyrocket. With overall crop outputs lagging demand, desperate farmers who wish to capitalize off record prices are now using a wide array of organic and inorganic fertilizers to help boost production. With this in mind, we have set up a World Food Shortage Plays portfolio on Stockpickr.com to help develop stock ideas to capitalize off this global trend. (emphasis mine)

So the basic idea would be that, since human beings have to eat and drink in order to live, any system that keeps a great number of human beings from doing that or that benefits from their misfortune, could be considered an enemy of humanity.

I think that this is called, "arguing from first principals", but, I cannot see that this conclusion is an oversimplification. DS

What has been lost? - III

Photo by Giacomo Brunelli

"In the wake of 1989, with boundless confidence and insufficient reflection, we put the twentieth century behind us and strode boldly into its successor swaddled in self-serving half-truths: the triumph of the West, the end of History, the unipolar American moment, the ineluctable march of globalization and the free market." Tony Judt - New York Review of Books

"These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people. I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending." Paul Krugman - New York Times

"Almost all the food we eat - 95% - is oil-dependent, so as oil prices rise, the cost of food does too. Oil is central to fertilisers, mechanised production, transportation and packaging. However, between 1950 - when mechanisation and fertilisers transformed farming into agribusiness - and 1984, world grain production increased by 250%. The consequent cheapness of food kept inflation down and allowed for the postwar consumer boom. For years experts have been asking what will we eat when the crises of climate change and oil depletion converge, with the possible end of our globalised food supply." Rosie Boycott - Guardian

"The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis — by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources." Tony Karon - Time

"The hedge funds are now active in commodities and are playing the futures contracts, where upwards of 30 million tons of soybeans for future delivery are contracted for every day. They are also buying the companies that stock grains.(...) Futures purchases of agricultural commodities classically have been the means by which a limited number of traders stabilized future commodity prices and enabled farmers to finance themselves through future sales. Speculative purchases have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators, who hold their contracts to drive up current prices with the intention not of selling the commodities on the real future market, but of unloading their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at the expense of the ultimate consumer. Even the general public can now play the speculative game; most banks offer investment funds specializing in metals, oil, and more recently, food products. It is astonishing in the present situation that the international financial institutions and government regulators have done little to control or banish this parasitical and anti-social practice. The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence." William Pfaff

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What the United States is facing at this moment, although few seem to realize it, is an ideological collapse. This happens when a mind set is no longer appropriate for confronting reality. An example would be an American Indian confronted with a steam train for the first time... "iron horse".

I think it strange that so few people recognize the symptoms of this collapse, when we so recently witnessed a similar galloping, ideological, wasting disease in another seemingly healthy patient: the USSR.

Listen to this imaginary dialog from the last years of the Soviet Union.

Scene: the Kremlin.

(Enter a flunky in the minister's office)

Flunky: Comrade Minister, a messenger has just arrived from Siberia.

Minister: A messenger, why didn't they just phone?

F: The phones aren't working Comrade Minister.

M: (sighs) Oh well, what's the message?

F: There is no toilet paper left in Siberia, Comrade Minister. They want to know what to tell the masses.

M: That is easy Comrade, since the telephones aren't working, tell them to use the pages of the telephone book.

F: But, Comrade Minister, the only telephone books are in Party headquarters.

M: (galvanized) Give the order immediately for the party to distribute phone books to the masses!

F: (fawning) Brilliant, Comrade Minister!

M: (drawing himself up) We are building Socialism comrade.

Now tweak that dialog around a little bit, change a few names and such and you might be hearing similar dialogs today in the World Bank or the IMF... not to mention the hapless White House.

As William Pfaff says in the snippet at the head of this post, "The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence." We are as trapped in our own ideology as the "Comrade Minister" in the sketch above.

What we are facing is a world that, contrary to our ideological mindset, needs to be heavily regulated and controlled if we are not to sink quickly into universal, dystopic barbarity of the sort that science fiction writers thrive on.

To avoid endless warfare, famine disease and genocide, everything we think and do must be reexamined, especially our idea of individual choice as expressed in consumption. This reduction of personal choice and freedom of action among peoples in developed countries, seems inevitable, either before or after a universal hecatomb... Whether we like it or not.

Where does democracy fit in?

More or less the democratic choice would be to either democratically choose to forgo our lifestyle or to have the choice imposed on us by whatever tyrant emerged triumphant from a world drowned in blood and ashes.

There is a slogan that you sometimes hear in May Day celebrations in Spanish speaking countries:

¡Socialismo o Barbaridad!

I don't think that needs translation. The problem is that "Socialism" is an unacceptable word today and previous clumsy versions were suffocated by this cornucopiac view of life that we now find is asphyxiating us in turn.

In the previous post I gave an example of how it was possible for Ekhardt Tolle to extract and retell the core of Vendantic Hinduism, at its most sophisticated, in plain, jargon-less English, so that the strange and exotic terminology wouldn't repel seekers who needed that essence.

At the bottom of whatever impulse that led thinking men and women to embrace Socialism in the first place is also a core of truth that has to be rethought and respoken.

And the wider that inquiry is and the more people participate in it the more democratic the process will be and the more humane will be the final society that emerges, however the change will come whether we participate in its gestation or not.

Sadly, nothing I have seen or heard in the American presidential campaign gives me the slightest reason to hope that anyone, with any chance of a leadership role in the United States, is any more ready for the challenges looming ahead than our "Comrade Minister" of the Soviet twilight was. DS

To die of success

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically(...)That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology". BMO strategist Donald Coxe

The latest generation of Chinese-Americans, many of whom grew up in the restaurants their parents worked in, are increasingly choosing legal and medical careers over the kitchen. As a result, Chinese restaurants have been relying even more on imports from Hong Kong, Taiwan or mainland China.

But the sizzling economy in China has raised the incomes and profiles of the best chefs, who now find it less desirable to leave their families and friends halfway around the world.

Several major restaurant owners in the city said salaries for Chinese executive chefs range from $42,000 to $50,000, depending on the size of the business, a 30% rise in the past five years. In China, top chefs are getting close to those amounts, while the cost of living in cities like Beijing and Shanghai is still a lot lower. New York Daily News

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When I was a little boy, oh so long ago, my grandmother, who followed in the great culinary traditions of Scotland and Ireland, used to encourage me whenever I refused to eat some little horror that she had dished up, by saying, "think of all the starving millions in China!". Think indeed.

It is true that in the last two hundred years countless millions of Chinese have starved to death in many famines that swept that country. The same of course was true of the other Asiatic giant, India. Both countries were synonymous with dramatic poverty or at the best a picturesque, austere simplicity. Certainly western imperialism had much to do with the poverty of countries that had been prosperous for thousands of years before the industrial revolution.

Globalization has changed all that, instead of simply providing raw materials and captive markets for our manufactures China and India, and the rest of Asia, have become seamlessly integrated into our economies and hundreds of millions of their citizens are now part of a global middle class with middle class aspirations. Naturally the new middle classes of China and India want to eat the same food as the American and European middle classes eat -- they probably always did -- but now they can pay for it.

I stood in Zhang Meidi's cabbage patch, kicking the dirt with my boots.(...) This is China's bread basket. Wheat has been grown here for thousands of years. But Zhang Meidi has given up on it(...) The prices in the market were good these days, she said, but not for wheat.(...) She started by giving me a lesson on China's food chain. First, she explained, people in China now had more money so they wanted to eat better things, more meat and more fruit and vegetables. That is why she is growing cabbages. Her little handkerchief of land would grow enough wheat to earn about £200 ($395) but, by planting cabbages, she had almost trebled her earnings. And, in the summer, she would grow tomatoes and earn almost £700 ($1,300).(...) Zhang Meidi and her neighbours were being swallowed up by the city. Urbanisation and the creeping desert in the north mean that China is losing 25 million acres (10m hectares) of farmland a year. And just as the amount of land is shrinking, the demand for food is getting greater. When she was younger, Zhang Meidi explained, her family would only have meat on special occasions. Pork would be served when guests arrived or during China's big national holidays. Now it was on their dinner table two or three times a week.(...) Over the next 12 years, an estimated 320 million people will move to cities. As one analyst put it, a country larger than the United States will be created by new urban Chinese by 2020. And when they come to the cities, these new arrivals - almost instantly - start eating more protein. Now that they no longer grown their own food, and with more wages in their pocket, their diet changes. So Chinese people are eating less wheat and fewer grains in general because they are upgrading to meats, especially pork. But that pork comes from hungry pigs who consume a lot more grain.(...) And other crops will follow. The days of food self-sufficiency in China are numbered. So, like the rest of us, China will turn to Australia, Africa and South America to fill its belly. It is small wonder that food prices are climbing everywhere, not just here in China. BBC News

And it isn't just food.

Virtually every automaker on earth will keep a close eye on the Indian Auto Show in New Delhi, where Tata plans to introduce what it's calling the People's Car on Jan. 10. The industry is looking to emerging markets for growth, and many companies are gearing up to build cars that can be sold at rock-bottom prices—in both developing countries and more established markets. Toyota and Volkswagen's Skoda subsidiary are planning small cars for India. Suzuki says it will soon cut the price of its cheapest model in India. And Renault-Nissan has teamed up with Indian motorcycle maker Bajaj Auto to launch a $3,000 car next year. "If Tata can do it, we can do it," says Renault-Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn. BusinessWeek

Is there enough oil on earth to fuel an India with as many cars per capita as the USA or Europe? Is there enough air in the world to breathe after those cars pour their exhaust fumes into it. Is there enough grain in the world to feed all the pigs that the Chinese could eat? Is there enough water to water that grain? Are we about to run into the theories of Karl Marx like a speeding truck running into a wall of cement?

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

It took along time, but that prophesy has finally been fulfilled. We are very, very close to finding out now whether or not our immense well being has always been predicated on the misery of others. And we are also close to finding out whether or not the whole thing will come crashing down around our ears if the others come to live as well as we do or even dream of doing so. DS

The era of cheap food is over.

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This should be the most important story in the world, but it isn't... and perhaps that is the most important story in the world . DS

World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns - International Herald Tribune
Abstract: In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday. The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food," particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency's food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, he said. New figures show that the total cost of foodstuffs imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent, to $107 million, in the last year. At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, FAO records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980.(...) Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows. "We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. READ IT ALL

Ending the modern era

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We are looking at a sea change in international relations.

Since the nineteenth century everything has been predicated on the seigneur-vassal relationship between Europe/America and the rest of the non-white world. (with the Japanese as 'honorary caucasians'). That is finished. This is truly the end of the modern era.

Imperialism didn't end when the empires dissolved. When the former colonies became independent, nothing really changed at all. In the Cold War world, they simply became the vassals of either the USA or the USSR: rule takers, not rule makers.

China's engaging with capitalism on capitalism's own ground, but playing by Chinese rules, has put paid to hundreds of years of Eurocentric navel gazing. The rise of India's enormous, new, English speaking middle class, dynamic and voracious, only accelerates the tipping of the scales.

When something as massive and long standing as that relationship of "superior/Inferior" falls apart, many are hurt by the falling debris. Things like food, water and air can no longer be taken for granted anymore. We now enter terra incognita. That is the principal characteristic of our time. DS
Food: Cheap no more - The Economist
Abstract: In early September the world price of wheat rose to over $400 a tonne, the highest ever recorded. In May it had been around $200. Though in real terms its price is far below the heights it scaled in 1974, it is still twice the average of the past 25 years. Earlier this year the price of maize (corn) exceeded $175 a tonne, again a world record. It has fallen from its peak, as has that of wheat, but at $150 a tonne is still 50% above the average for 2006. As the price of one crop shoots up, farmers plant it to take advantage, switching land from other uses. So a rise in wheat prices has knock-on effects on other crops. Rice prices have hit records this year, although their rise has been slower. The Economist's food-price index is now at its highest since it began in 1845, having risen by one-third in the past year. Normally, sky-high food prices reflect scarcity caused by crop failure. Stocks are run down as everyone lives off last year's stores. This year harvests have been poor in some places, notably Australia, where the drought-hit wheat crop failed for the second year running. And world cereals stocks as a proportion of production are the lowest ever recorded. The run-down has been accentuated by the decision of large countries (America and China) to reduce stocks to save money. Yet what is most remarkable about the present bout of “agflation” is that record prices are being achieved at a time not of scarcity but of abundance. According to the International Grains Council, a trade body based in London, this year's total cereals crop will be 1.66 billion tonnes, the largest on record and 89m tonnes more than last year's harvest, another bumper crop. That the biggest grain harvest the world has ever seen is not enough to forestall scarcity prices tells you that something fundamental is affecting the world's demand for cereals.(...) Central bankers are determined to ensure that what could be a one-off shift in food prices does not create continuing inflation by pushing up wages or creating expectations of higher prices. So they are tightening monetary policy. China increased interest rates in August, Chile in July, Mexico in May. The striking thing about these rises is that they are the opposite of what has been happening in some rich countries. The Federal Reserve reduced rates by 50 basis points in September and 25 points in October; the Bank of Canada cut rates this week. The indirect effect of food-price rises has therefore been to widen the interest-rate differential between rich and emerging markets. And all this is going on as the economic balance of power is shifting. Growth in America and Europe is slowing; China and India are going great guns. Financial confidence in the West has been shaken by the subprime-mortgage crisis; capital flows into emerging markets are setting records. This shift will be tricky to handle. Such transitions always are. The risk is of a bubble in emerging markets. READ IT ALL

Hunger, the cure for mass obesity (how's that for optimism?)

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A Spanish friend of mine says that I have too gloomy a view of world affairs, "catastrofista" he calls me.

My friend is a sardonic, lapsed Catholic and not likely the type to be joyously awaiting "rapture", you know, the kind of person who sees every horror in the newspapers as a sign that Jesus is in the starting gate, champing at the bit, raring for the Last Trump. People like that get a lot of fun reading the papers and watching TV news nowadays

I've selected an article from the sober, Financial Times on a global food shortage. It seems that according to the UN, 854m people around the world haven't got enough to eat (of course in the United States poor people die of obesity related diabetes, but that's another story) also we are looking at several wars, any one of which could bring on a recession or a hecatomb and to top it off, at this moment, the next President of the United States is either going to be Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton.

I really wonder what my optimistic, Spanish friend is smoking. I wish he would pass me some. DS

Rising prices may herald the first global food shortage since the 1970s - Financial Times
Abstract: When the United Nations held its annual World Food Day last week to publicise the plight of the 854m malnourished people around the world, its warning that there “are still too many hungry people” was a little more anxious than usual. Finding food to feed the hungry is becoming an increasingly difficult task as growing demand for staples such as wheat, corn and rice brings higher prices. That is leading all nations – rich and poor – to compete for food supplies. Food security is not a new concern for countries that have battled political instability, droughts or wars. But for the first time since the early 1970s, when there were global food shortages, it is starting to concern more stable nations as well.(...) countries are starting to question whether they can afford to keep feeding themselves. Wheat and milk prices have surged to all-time highs while those for corn and soya­beans stand at well above their 1990s averages. (...) “The world is gradually losing the buffer that it used to have to protect against big swings [in the market],” says Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the grains trading group at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. “There is a sense of panic.”(...) (...) The difficulties are compounded because the importance of food in overall consumer spending is negatively correlated with income levels . For example, food is more than 60 per cent of the “consumption basket” measured by economists in sub-Saharan Africa, whereas it is 30 per cent in China and only 10 per cent in the US, according to the IMF.(...) Grain exporting countries have consequently started restricting the amount of grain they export, postponing sales or imposing in some cases prohibitive export tariffs to keep their local market well supplied, avoiding politically damaging food price increases. (...) The European Union has suspended its “set-aside” rules that bar farmers from planting cereals on 10 per cent of their land. The rules were designed to avoid over­production but Brussels is now worried that there will not be enough cereals to meet demand. (...) In the near future, demand for agricultural raw materials is likely to continue rising in world markets as countries that have previously been able to meet their own food needs start importing more, increasing the global challenge of feeding populations. Don Mitchell, an economist at the World Bank, says: “Although China and India are relatively self-sufficient in food, some economists doubt that this can continue as incomes rise and [think] that they will need to rely much more on imports.” The FAO expects India to import more wheat and China to increase imports of coarse grains to supply feed to its livestock industry. Both countries are also expected to increase imports of oils that are used in food production, such as palm oil. The World Bank estimates that cereal production will have to rise by nearly 50 per cent and meat output by 85 per cent between 2000 and 2030 to meet projected global demand. READ IT ALL