The trouble with billionaires

Wes and I this past Thursday night got to see Linda McQuaig speaking at Fanshawe College about “The Trouble with Billionaires.” Her talk was based upon an upcoming book on the same topic, which I can't wait to read. I've previously read two of her books. First, All You Can Eat exposed the current ways capitalism operates in our current world, with a particular focus on its shortcomings and alternatives to its current operation. In particular, the book is an excellent exposition of Karl Polanyi, an anthropological, sociological, and historical economist who focused on the ways that markets are always embedded in civil society. “Laissez-faire was planned,” Polanyi argued, echoing the research of Karl Marx finding that capitalism was born through violence and oppression. Second, It's the Crude, Dude looked at oil reserves as a major precipitating cause of the Iraq War. Especially enlightening in the book is her consideration of gas efficiency standards and the associated loopholes created for SUVs when they first arrived on the market.

While her talk was not as engaging as a previous one Wes and I had saw for It's the Crude, Dude, she nonetheless brought forth some very interesting ideas. First is the idea of the income parade, which she borrows from Dutch economist Jan Pen. The idea is simple: each person has a height based on their income, with mean heights representing a person with a mean income, and each person having heights taller or shorter respectively. (Make twice the mean income and you're twice as tall; half and you're a shorty.) Each person in the society is ordered by height/income and marches in a parade that lasts one hour. The idea behind the income parade is to give clear images to make comparisons and to imagine unfathomable amounts of money – for instance, we can compare how many minutes it takes to get to the mean income; how short the earliest (that is, poorest) people are; and even how far into outer space the richest person's head goes.

The second intriguing idea McQuaig had concerns the argument for income distribution. My own thoughts on this topic have been essentially as follows. First, wealth tends to exhibit a Matthew effect. The Matthew effect was coined by the eminent functionalist sociologist Robert K. Merton to describe the ways that well-known researchers tend to receive more credit for their work than lesser known academics, even where the quality and topic of their work is held constant. Merton takes this from a Bible quotation; in the New International Version of the Bible (the Bible favoured by many fundamendalist churches!), it reads as follows: For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away (Matthew 25:29). People with money often make more money for doing nothing. People with only small amounts of capital (such as machinery worked by the owner of a company) or none at all tend to have to earn income by working; those with more can simply invest it and watch more money come in.

Second, wealth tends to exhibit what I would call an “elephant effect,” by which I mean that the wealthy (the elephant), by dint of their influence, “crash” around civil society and use their money in ways that do not make the rest of us better off. A good example of this would be the use of money to purchase media outlets and production, which results (at least potentially) in the reduction in the number of viewpoints necessary to sustain liberalism and democracy. The United States demonstrates this effect all the time with the amount of money that is poured into elections and buying off government officials.

Third, those with money tend to rely on a greater share of societal resources in order to sustain that wealth. More money requires more use of roads, more need for protection in the legal/police system, more to lose in case of invasion (hence more need for defense), more benefit from healthy employees who work to sustain the wealth, and so on. McQuaig's second intriguing point is a variant of this third argument. In essence, however, she argues that the wealthy more often do not only rely on such government provided public goods for the basis of their wealth, but also upon the cultural inheritance that comes before them. Her example (which in my mind is unfortunate) is that of Bill Gates, who relied on every technical improvement from the wheel to language in order to create DOS and later Windows. Although he deserves to be compensated (and perhaps quite handsomely) for these innovations, she argued that these represent at best piecemeal improvements over previous technologies. Moreover, because they rely on materials that are not “his” – public goods and “common goods”[1] – he deserves not to be permitted to gain benefits from the public and common goods that form the basis of his work. Moreover, redistribution of income and wealth makes possible the very creation of public and common goods that lead to more wealth.

One interesting point raised by Matt Ferrell, a professor at Fanshawe who teaches political science, concerns the “after effect” of such innovations. Bill Gates's innovations, he argued, obviously improve (or perhaps could be argued to have improved!) our ability to teach, to design courses, to communicate with each other and students; so, what, then, is the amount of compensation he should be rewarded for this? McQuaig's arguments really did not hold much water here, as she simply continued to assert that redistribution of income is fair given that most individuals rely on public and common goods to generate their wealth in the first place. But Wes pointed to a far more simple argument: none of us rightly makes claims to wealth generated from our activities, except as they pertain to the direct rewards of the activity themselves. A taxicab driver has no claim to the winnings from a lottery player who takes a ride to collect their winnings; a Tim Horton's employee has no claim to the wages made from an officer worker's increased productivity because of caffeine; a construction company has no claim to the profits of a multinational corporation when they build their head office. Therefore, I don't think that Bill Gates deserves to get to hold onto his money because he has continued to make our lives . . . let's say “different,” because I would feel uncomforable with asserting that he's made them “better.” Especially considering that I am typing this with Open Office 3.2 (A free Microsoft Office rival) on the aforementioned Linux.

[1] I am not well versed in economics to know if there is a term that is covered by what I mean by common goods. I use it to represent human inheritance patterns – culture – that are either too diffuse or too remote in origin (language is a good example of this, as are many inventions) to specifically locate in the work of one person, or even of a bounded group of individuals. Inventions which originate with such individuals can become common goods through diffusion and further application. Although evolutionary theory as we know it first emerges with Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, the “body” of knowledge since gained about evolution would be hard to pin down on any individual scientist(s), unless we focus on only very specific areas of work. Non-rivalrous (from economics) captures some of this distinction as common goods are generally infinitely shareable with others, and limited only by the capacity of our media and educational systems to disseminate such goods.

The Politics of Food, 1.2

Lest we forget food is fundamentally about you and me, I share with everyone a paraphrased conversation at the supermarket.

Generic college-aged white guy: Dude, you ever have Sauce n’ Cake? It’s a cake you make in the microwave.

Generic college-aged East-Indian guy: In the microwave? Does it taste good?

Generic college-aged white guy: Oh yeah, it will blow your mind. I was eating like a box of it a day when I was trying to get bigger. [laughs]

So there you have it: if you’re trying to build mass, spurn the protein, go for an artificially flavoured pudding mix you can make in the microwave. The conversation was even funnier to overhear because I used to love Sauce n’ cake myself as a kid.

What to Eat Part 1.1

I found a good review of Pollan’s book over on Briarpatch magazine’s website.  It’s a good mag, one that I’ve read on and off, and I’ve recently become a subscriber.  It also reviews Paul Roberts’s The End of Food (which I’ve also read) and the No Nonsense Guide to World Food (which I haven’t but may pick up). 

There’s also an interesting article on whey protein and how it came into being.  It’s not very pretty for a lot of reasons.  I won’t give away all the surprises, but suffice to say that we weren’t eating the stuff 25 years ago…

What to Eat: Part 1

I have been reading a lot of books on food lately.  Most of this stems from my dissertation topic: I’ve chosen to examine the narrative and moral structure of what I’ve termed ‘weight loss reality TV.’ There are quite a few shows in this genre, including perhaps the best well-known (and most widely distributed and cross marketed), The Biggest Loser.  I’ve entitled this part one because there are other books I’ll likely discuss in my blog in the upcoming days or weeks. 

A while ago I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Readers of his earlier food book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, will see a little of his old book given a different spin, including his critical take on industrial agriculture.  But he also considers the science and ideology behind nutritional science, and he emerges very skeptical of the advice given by the experts. 

He explodes many sacred cows in his book.  Fat in our diets is not really the enemy.  Breaking down foods into their constituent nutrients (or antioxidants, or whatever) is not a good way to conduct science or to ensure health.  And perhaps what is going to be the most maddening to most people is that we eat too many animals.  Far, far too many.  And too many animal products.  This last part might not seem that explosive in terms of what nutritionists have been telling us about saturated fats and cholesterol, but Pollan’s point is a double swipe at what he calls “nutritionism,” which is that food can be reduced to constituent parts (fibre, vitamins/minerals, macronutrients, etc).  First, this ignores the problem that farming animals causes in the first place.  Too much meat not only means more health problems; it also means higher chances of environmental degradation, for instance.  Second, this ignores that many cultures without boneless, skinless chicken breasts have done fine without too many animal products.  Many people do just fine incorporating them into their diets as once or twice a week luxury items, and a variety of other cultures across the globe have lower rates of chronic illnesses than do our own. [1]

So what does Pollan recommend?  In some ways you could be saved the trouble of reading the book, as the cover picture summarizes his approach:  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  By this, he means simply that we should eat things that are not overly processed or intended for convenience, that we should eat less, and that our diet should lean towards vegetables, fruits, and grains, rather than animal products.  It might even seem to be a “diet,” summarized this way, but it’s not really intended to be. It’s intended to be a slogan that connects the various strands of his book.  Not only is that diet likely to be good for our health, but it is also likely good for our environment, it is more sound than most of the nutrition science, and it defeats efforts from those who hawk foods and fad diets.   But Pollan’s showing why this slogan is a good one to follow is engaging.  Although written to the non-expert, I would also be tempted to assign it in a sociology of food course because it would provoke a great deal of discussion. 

[1] Although Pollan’s book comes across as somewhat Amerocentric, his arguments apply to all to the degree that they adhere to a “Western” diet: those in North America, Europe, Australia, and those who are eating like people in those areas.  Even here, though, there are clearly wide variations. 

The Cigarette Century

Discussed in this posting:  

Brandt, Allan M.  2007.  The Cigarette Century:  The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America.  New York: Basic Books.  600pp.

Brandt's book is an illuminating look at the many facets of the cigarette, a story he starts in the later part of the 19th century.  The book is divided into five broad sections, dealing with the culture, science, politics, law, and globalization of this consumer good.  In the process, Brandt reveals much more than the cigarette itself; rather, tracking them is in large measure a tracking of many modern developments that we now take for granted.

Among the topics that are touched on by the cigarette are the evolution of manufacturing processes, the sometimes arcane realm of tort and civil law, the rise and refinement of public relations and advertising, and the insuation of corporate and moneyed interests into politics.  Thus, this book is both a comprehensive history of the cigarette, and in many ways a case study through which these various social processes can be seen to have changed throughout the 20th century up to the current day.  

In large measure, the book tells of an industry which wanted to make itself immune to all sorts of regulations in many ways.  First, by cloaking itself in controversy by maintaining, long after the science had lead to a preponderance of evidence suggesting smoking cased cancer, they had evaded successfully medical and governmental regulation.  Second, by cloaking themselves in the language of "rights" and "emancipation" and "feminism", they helped lead the charge to spread smoking to women, to protect it under the guise of allowing smokers a "right to choose," and to force other countries to open their borders to these products despite any health consequences.  

While the book is interesting and comprehensive throughout, the writing and story becomes most compelling in the section entitled "Law," where the access to the corporations' archives displays in full brutality the cynical manipulation and arguments that these business players wished to propagate on the American public.  Here I read the book aghast and shocked, wondering with each legal argument that a member of the prosecuting team put forward the justification executives would retort with in court.  

The book, while comprehensive, does not tell every story that would be of interest.  Because it is a story of cigarettes and not tobacco, other aspects of "cigarette history" (or "prehistory"), such as tobacco and slavery, do not receive much attention in the book.  It is also short on comparative history of tobacco in other nations, containing scattered references to the British companies throughout, but not coalescing into a full-blown review of differences in similarities across societies.  Some of this is also encountered in the last section of globalization, but mostly from an Americentric point of view.  This isn't necessarily a fault, however, as Brandt's book makes it clear that these companies have been among the most powerful in lobbying to have trade barriers knocked down for their product. 

This book will likely not be the last written on American cigarettes, as the archives made available by litigation and brave whistleblowers is dauntingly huge.  Nonetheless, Brandt succeeds in reviewing a history that is both quite specific, and at the same time, quite broad.  It is history and sociology at its most powerful, making something mundane and ordinary into something strange, a mystery to be unravelled, explained, and above all, demystified.  

"Immune to Reason"

The title is taken from a Mother Jones article discussing parents who choose not to have themselves and their children vaccinated (Allen 2008). The article points out that studies that have attempted to find links between vaccines and different conditions - most notably, autism - have failed to show that there is any population based link between vaccination and the conditions it has been putatively linked to. This means that, as a population, we aren't seeing increased rates of autism or other diseases because of vaccination.

Yet this hasn't stopped some people from opting out of the process altogether. A key point to make about the vaccination-autism link is that evidence has stacked up against it only at a population level. This means that in individual cases this might have been a cause of the problem. At the same time, as Collins and Pinch (2006) discuss as they review this facet of medicine through the lens of the sociology of science, we don't know what the potential "masked markers" that determine if vaccination will cause autism are yet (or even that such markers even exist). Another problem is that when enough people fail to get vaccinated, there is a loss of what is called "herd immunity" - if enough people get vaccinated, it will protect everyone, even those who aren't vaccinated. Vaccination can never be at 100% because of various issues (for instance, some people will be too young; some will be allergic to vaccinations; some will mistakenly believe they are vaccinated when they are not for some reason; people may immigrate from other places where vaccination wasn't undertaken; and so on), but the problem is that every single person who chooses not to be vaccinated makes it more likely that others who aren't vaccinated for whatever reason will also fall prey to the disease.

Both discussions of "herd mentality" interestingly miss a key point of what might motivate vaccination skeptics to not become vaccinated. Ironically, it is located in the very successes of medicine and nutrition. Because these two factors have eliminated the incidence of previous diseases which were deadly or debilitating (e.g., polio, whooping cough, etc.) people are now in a historically significant position where the risk of these diseases appears lower than highly visible and publicized conditions such as autism. The success of medicine has created the ironic possibility of more doubt of medicine. But as Collins and Pinch (2006) point out, despite the low profile of these diseases in most western nations, the risk of developing them is probably much higher than autism - particularly if one chooses not to vaccinate.

I am not suggesting that we ignore any potential vaccine-autism (or vaccine-other condition) link; indeed, testing new vaccines in the future will demand that they are tested to monitor for such conditions, to establish that the new medicines are doing much more good than harm. Hypothesized "markers" may even be found so that doctors will be able to recommend to parents that their particular child has a good reason to not be vaccinated. But under current conditions, we are all "blind" to what those markers might be. As terrible as autism might be, we should not forget that other terrible conditions can more easily infect the non-vaccinated. In such conditions, we would all be advised to take a scientific leap of faith and roll up our arm cuffs.

References:

Allen, Arthur. 2008. "Immune to Reason." Mother Jones, October, pp. 91-2.

Collins, Harry and Trevor Pinch. 2006. Dr. Golem: How to Think about Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Miro

I've just found a new program online that I've been enjoying for the past couple of days called Miro. It's a totally free media program that can handle everything from RSS feeds to music and movie files (of many varieties), as well as acting as a Bittorrent client for those of you wanting to download files this way. All of these features would be great alone, but the program also includes an integrated "channel search" that allows you to find media from a wide variety of providers, much in the way of a video blog, but with a prettier interface. For example, one of my favourite online news programs Democracy Now! is available this way. I've also found channels that link to Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS program by the populist journalist), The Onion News (incredibly funny satire), as well as some stuff from Discovery Channel (I have an inner science geek that I haven't adequately nurtured since I left middle school).

The footprint of the program seems to be relatively small, using about 112-130K of RAM on my computer when I've checked, which is another bonus as many of the other media programs as hogs in this way. (It's also a bonus if you consider how much memory separate programs would use collectively if you were running them at the same time.) There is a version for all of the major platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows), although the Windows version apparently includes some issues with the firewall. I haven't run into them yet, but the page includes a helpful workaround if this happens to you.

So far I'm in love.