Economy

It’s Earth Day, Prepare Yourself for Green Living Advertising …

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Very Green

Every day it seems like the marketers are thinking of new products that can give a good green-wash, and sell as a premium, especially around the occasion of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, popularly known as Earth Day. It’s actually pretty ironic that the capitalists of the world have taken Vladimir Lenin birthday’s to sell marked-up “green” products. Market-specialization does mean you can charge a higher price.

The best way to live green is to buy nothing. Every material item you buy has an environmental impact. The question should always be when shopping — do I really need this item?

A person smarter then me once said, “Nothing becomes obsolete faster then the future.” Futuristic technologies often become obsolete quickly, as do many of the trendy green-products whose use often doesn’t live up to the hype. Sure, energy efficiency standards are necessary to create a floor for products and spur innovation, but much that is hyped as green technology rarely lives up to it’s promise. If something where to save a lot of energy, or have superior environmental performance, why isn’t it used already?

I often thought, farmers and sportsmen are some of the greenest people out there. If you spend a lot of time in the field and the forest, you learn a lot about nature. Hunters spent countless hours peering down from their tree stands, observing the world around them. Farmers know the cost of food waste firsthand, they work tireless hours to produce the raw materials that turned into food. People who live off-grid know how much energy really costs — especially when their battery voltage starts dropping. Country boys who burn their own trash, know exactly how noxious some of the materials are they consume every day.

The greenest thing you can do on Earth Day, is spend no money. Stay off of Amazon, away from the stores. Go for a walk to a nearby nature preserve or park, spend some time observing nature. Go fishing, go hiking! If you can walk to work and your destination, that’s even better, but if you have to hop a bus going that way, it’s better then driving. Don’t by into commercialism crap this Earth Day.

Homesteading and Earth Day! 🚜 🌎

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There are really two kinds of schools of thought around conservation and environmentalism more generally. There are the back-to-earth types, and more high-tech oriented ways of doing things, emphasizing technological solutions to environmental problems like solar panels, lithium ion batteries, heat pumps, electric cars, etc.

The technocratic environmentalists are often pushing for top-down solutions that use the latest in research to provide solutions to human needs and wants that use advanced materials to reduce per capita carbon emissions. They often look at per capita emissions, multiplying them out by population, and have bold hopes that with the right technologies we as a society can be less polluting and less destructive to the earth. Their much touted-solar and wind farms sound great on paper, but what does it mean to the environment and landscape when a lot of our energy comes from them sprawled out over millions of acres?

In many ways, they seem hopelessly naive. For one thing, many of green things in aggregate are less green, especially those who which use heavy metals like cadmium-infused glass for solar panels or various rare-earths for magnets or even more natural materials like timber or farm crops rather then plastics. Often people are sold on things being compostable, even though they are quickly used and discarded to a landfill which is largely sealed from air, bacteria and water to speed biodegradation. Many material collected for recycling ultimately have no value and end up being landfilled. There definitely is a lot of scams surrounding the green-living, high-tech environmentalism put forward by some.

On the other hand, you have the back-to-the-land homesteaders, the off-griders, and country folk who produce a lot of their own needs from the lands they live in. While their per capita emissions might be higher — not everybody can live on 20 or 40 or even a 100 acres of land — in many ways they are living much closer to the earth. Where they raise and harvest their own meat and vegetables without plastic packaging, generate their own power on-site largely using renewables, manage their own waste by composting, burning, reuse and off-site recycling. Rather then consuming 10.3 MWh of fossil-fueled grid power electricity per year and 400 therms of gas per year, and having bins full of trash weekly trash-haul, they are much more self-sufficient.

Technocratic environmentalists often look down at homesteaders. All ruminants from cows to sheep burp methane when they breakdown hay and grass in their stomachs. Off-grid and farm living often means hauling large machinery and water tanks, which means fuel-hungry pickup trucks. Wood stoves and burn barrels produce noxious smoke at levels far above the urban-dweller who relies on gas or electric heat and uses a municipal landfill or incinerator to dispose of waste. Livestock produce manure and make mud which can run-off and is smelly. Even regulated hunting and trapping consumes animals, even if it’s below levels that significant impacts the environment. Remote locations often require longer commutes both for work and purchasing things.

I am not fan of feel-good environmentalism. Certainly I am willing to embrace green technology if it actually improves sustainability, reduces emissions and protects the environment but it can’t be like so many of green technologies popularly sold today to “do your part”. I do respect those who live close to earth, be it homesteader or farmer, who rejects technology and mass-media crass commercialism. That life might be more enviromentally-impactful on a per capita basis, but better for local environment and certainly the person who lives such a life.

Work From Home Data Shows Who’s Fully Remote, Hybrid and in Person – The New York Times

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Work From Home Data Shows Who’s Fully Remote, Hybrid and in Person – The New York Times

The American workplace’s experiment with remote work happened, effectively, overnight: With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, more than half of workers began working from home at least part of the time, according to Gallup. But the shift to a permanent hybrid-work reality has been gradual, with periods of tension as workers across white-collar industries pushed against executives’ return-to-office orders.

Those battles have largely come to an end, and workplaces have reached a new hybrid-work status quo. Roughly one-tenth of workers are cobbling together a combination of work in the office and from home, and a similar portion are working entirely remotely.

This population of hybrid and remote workers in the United States doesn’t quite mirror the larger population of workers: Government data shows they tend to have more education and are more often white and Asian.

Targeted advertising feeds my anxiety 🤖 🙉

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Few things I find more creepy is targeted advertising. It attempts to “target” based on machine learning, which looks at interactions on social media, webpages browsed and search terms to find what is most marketable for the user, not what is most relevant to the user.

The amount of data that feeds into targeted advertising is quite creepy. And often it makes judgements about a person that are quite wrong, as it’s only looking at population averages with a similar profile, and trying to make an educated guess at what products can be sold to that person. Yet, one isn’t defined by what advertisers think they can sell to you, and you shouldn’t take too seriously what people are paid to put in front of you.

Every time I mention my anxiety, I am fed a steady diet of advertisement for Better Help online mental health services, and the free-to-call 988 anti-suicide hotline. Targeted mental health advertising is downright creepy! When I was concerned about my excess peeing and pooping — from all the water and fiber in food — I was fed a steady diets about prostate and stomach cancers. Maybe because of my google searches, but long after my doctor visit and tests confirmed I was mostly clean, it was still creeply messaging to me. And then since I’ve gotten interested in healthy eating, I see constant advertising for services for people with anorexia, and granola bars and other highly-processed “health foods”. Not foods that are actually healthy, but come with good mark-up for the food processors.

Since I’ve mentioned my issues with new landlord and my search for rural property, I’ve now been getting fed a steady diet of advertising about landlord tenant management software and speculative real estate investments. Then there has been a steady batch of advertising I’ve been consuming about moving services, and extended stay places, as if soon I am to become homeless. I don’t think my current living accommodations are sustainable forever, but I really don’t think I’m in immediate risk of homelessness, despite the bit of a game my new landlord played over the rent check. Clearly if I got notice of the upcoming rent increase in June, my landlord isn’t seeking immediate eviction. He just wants my money and $100 a month more of it come June. Ironically, no advertising for land or property, despite all the time I spend on Zillow and studying the property tax rolls.

Then there are conflicting advertisements I keep seeing between investing for high-net worth individuals and services directed to the poorest of poorest people, such as those on welfare and section 8 housing. I’m not neither — I don’t have a million in investable assets, nor do I get welfare benefits. I’m closer to the prior then the later but not there, yet — and I’ll probably blow it on land and livestock. Some of it’s my personal interest in ways of being frugal and a responsible investing, but it’s fascinating to see the conflict. Discount cellphone providers like Mint Mobile still really want my business, and so do discount internet providers for low-income persons. But the real reason I choose not to have internet at home isn’t poverty, but it’s for the sanity of not having all that commercial crap in my apartment and to save a bit of money.

I know I’m not defined by commercial advertising, which exists solely to sell products to me but it creeps me out how much it knows about me and how it tries to sell me things based on things I have searched or explored on the internet.

Inflation is an existential threat to government programs

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Often it seems like when liberals think of inflation, they downplay it – and don’t see it as the existential threat it is to their ideology. It’s more of a political football to them. But a good way to think about inflation is a government program flat funded at the same amount, under 7% inflation will be halved every seven years.

Inflation automatically trims government spending if appropriations don’t increase at the rate of inflation. Asking for big jumps in tax rates is unpopular in inflationary times, especially when people are already struggling to make ends meet with inflation.

For now, while the economy is good, revenues may keep up with inflation. Indeed these days it seems like many localities are reporting record sales tax collections. But at the same time, markets are slowing as the fed rates increase which really puts a damper on the stock market, which is chilling bonuses and other highly taxable sources of revenue. Inflation is corrosive. Like any form of corrosion, it might lurk in background, but eventually the rust becomes visible. Hardly all good news in the world of tax revenues.

The knife is coming for the back of liberalism, and it won’t be held by the Republicans or Conservatives. It will be held by inflation, which is the killer of government programs that become too expensive to fund are current levels of services.