Readers Journal Essays

Since I rashly launched this weblog two years ago today, it seemed like an appropriate moment to launch the site's latest feature: Readers Journal Essays contributed by readers like you.

I owe the inspiration and concept to erudite reader Protagoras, who anticipated the high quality and wide variety of reader commentaries and essays which have already sprouted over on the Readers Journal. Just click on the "Readers Journal" logo to your right to enter the Journal's main page. From there, you can access the week's commentaries (shorter, informal comments) and the first essays.

I invite you to submit either format of commentary, with the request that you avoid the sort of rude attack-language which degrades the public discourse, and any cut-and-paste of work printed elsewhere. Partisan politics and pornography (is that a redundancy?) are well-covered elsewhere on the Web so there's no point in wasting mindshare on those topics--though political analysis is welcome.

What we all value, I think, is original content based on readers' own experiences, observations and thinking. Please note that while this site tends to be analytic and idea-heavy, it is also about levity, parody, garish good fun and even complete foolishness (see "Kroika! Chronicles" in the Archives), not to mention travel and multicultural experiences.

I will do my best, within the constraints of my available time, to offer you both a venue for your own writing, and a variety of thoughtful and entertaining work by other readers.

For data-hounds, here are a few site stats:
Unique visitors visits per month
June 2005: 1,402 1,856
June 2006: 13,545 33,480
April 2007: 25,175 59,780

I have no idea how this stacks up in the blogosphere, but it certainly isn't the millions garnered by Binky the Attack Pundit or Baldy the Treacherous Rabid Stock Pimp or even Pouty Girlz 24/7 Dorm Room Webcam. But somebody's stopping by, and I greatly appreciate your referrals and readership.

To see the Journal, go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

Thank you TG. N. ($20) for your very unexpected and thoughtful donation. I am greatly honored by your support. All contributors are listed below in acknowledgement of my gratitude.

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Advertising, "Empowerment" and Feminism

The greatest reward of hosting The American identity Literary Contest has been meeting talented young writers. Part of the fun is keeping in touch with the prize winners.

In March, fiction prize-winner David Wonpu invited me down to see his play "Cool for One Night" which was staged at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. It was an ambitious, well-scripted semi-autobiographical play performed by student actors. I was very impressed and look forward to seeing more of David's work.

Special Prize winner James Robidoux has been studying in Japan this past semester, and has promised a short report on his experiences. As someone who studied Japanese in college and who has many friends in Japan and Asia, I await his "fresh perspective" with great interest.

Non-fiction prize-winner Bethan Eynon sent me this update on her studies and career aims:

"I graduate this June with a BS in Journalism, a minor in Sociology, and a Women's Studies Certificate. Until then, most of my energy is going toward finishing my honors thesis, in which I'm looking at the use of feminist ideology, specifically empowerment, in advertising to motivate women's consumption. My conclusion is that feminist ideology, when co-opted by marketers, is used to further a capitalist, patriarchal system that feminists actually work to subvert.

As for the future, right now I have absolutely no idea! I want to take a year or two off before going to grad school, so it looks like I'm going to go the "job" route. Ideally, I'd like to end up working in the non-profit sector, which it turns out is hard to break into at an entry-level when you're also looking to make a salary to live off of.

Perhaps after I graduate I'll also expand the essay that I sent you. I've written a few short pieces on the same topic, and your contest made me seriously consider writing the rest down and sharing it with more people. In fact, I had never spoken a word of what I'd written to my family, and winning the contest forced me to open the dialogue with my parents. It was a very tentative conversation, but also very good in the long run--keeping silent on such issues isn't going to change anyone's perspective. A lot of my friends were shocked, too, and had nothing to say other than, "I had no idea..."

Around the same time last year, I ran across a blog on xanga of an adoptee who expressed feelings of mixed identity similar to mine, and I realized that it's not that no one else has these struggles, it's just that no one voices them. And that's the point of your contest, right? So thank you very much for your efforts to spread awareness."

If you haven't read Bethan's winning entry, I highly recommend it. You'll understand her comments once you've read her essay. If you know of a suitable job opening in journalism or Media Relations/ Communications in the private sector, let me know and I'll pass it on to Bethan.

Her Senior thesis topic has been relevant for 30 years. Marketers have been exploiting "feminist empowerment" since the 70s. If you're old enough, you will recall the Virginia Slims cigarette ads, "You've come a long way, baby," which overtly suggested that killing yourself with cigarettes was a sign of empowerment. I have long admired Microsoft's ads. Their depiction of women working productively and professionally in an "Office" environment is always subtle and powerful. Take a look at a recent MSFT ad, which I have marked up very slightly:

please go to www.oftwominds.com/blog.html to view the marked-up ad.

While I can't say for certain this is Paris, it looks like Paris--with all that "Old World" charm and promise of high-powered corporate positions and travel such a posting implies to American readers. "Smile. You're going to work." Great line, but our professionally dressed young model isn't smiling. She does, however, have the faintest Mona-Lisa-like hint of a confident upturn in her lips. Also note that she is so high-powered, she doesn't even need to carry a laptop or a briefcase. All that awaits her at the office.

If this isn't empowerment, I don't know what is. The outfit, the lack of lowly corporate-world accoutrements like laptops, the poise in her walk and expression--all speak to a position at the top of the corporate game. The ad is trumpeting not just female empowerment via Office2007, but the allure and virtues of global corporate life. Actual corporate life is a series of harried trips and dull, stupifying meetings filled with pointless Powerpoint slides and "marketing targets" and the like. You don't get to walk around Paris feeling smug--you're a corporate donkey who needs to generate $5 million in sales or you're toast.

Naturally, I had to subvert the ad's many subtexts. First, Mr. Softee is not about empowerment--it's about profit. (Mr. Softee is stock market slang for Microsoft, as its ticker symbol is MSFT.) And empowerment is not about your corporate office in Paris--it's being freed of the corporate treadmill entirely. Lastly, productivity is not about using software or phony "passion" for your corporate gig (which you're only using to get a better gig elsewhere)--it's about building your own business and your own life.

Thank you V.K. ($5) for your very unexpected and thoughtful donation. I am greatly honored by your support. All contributors are listed below in acknowledgement of my gratitude.

New feature! Readers Journal.
You might have noted a slight re-design and the addition of a new feature in the top-right of this page. At the suggestion of polymath reader "Protagoras", I've launched Readers Journal as a compilation of readers comments on the week's topics, and as a home for reader's full-length essays. It would be much easier to be "assimilated" by a blog template but at this point I stubbornly prefer to forego online threads and to continue handcoding my site.

My reasons are many, but the most important one is to pare the content and reader comments down to a managable size so you can read everything quickly. There are nine great comments which I heartily recommend. Instead of slogging through 172 comments as on other sites, here you get nine diverse, thoughtful views from other readers.

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The Paradox of Plenty III: Consumer Alienation

I can tell from a drop-off in email that the Paradox of Plenty isn't striking any power chords with readers. I never know what topic will resonate, and that hit-or-miss quality is part of the fun. As models of human behavior, these are powerful concepts--but as models, perhaps they seem detached from everyday life. I'm hoping they will start resonating with readers as the global economy stumbles and then falls, and as people start looking for the underlying mechanisms which may be at work (other than greed, fear, ignorance and hope).

Despite the collective yawn, I press onward to the Paradox of Plenty: Consumerism. Let's begin with a clip from today's Wall Street Journal which concedes what we all know: Americans own more crap than ever before, but this surfeit of consumer goods has not measurably increased our happiness. No Satisfaction: Why What You Have Is Never Enough: (subscription required, hopefully you can read it at your local library)

"We may have life and liberty. But the pursuit of happiness isn't going so well. As a country, we are richer than ever.

Yet surveys show that Americans are no happier than they were 30 years ago. The key problem: We aren't very good at figuring out what will make us happy. We constantly hanker after fancier cars and fatter paychecks -- and, initially, such things boost our happiness.

But the glow of satisfaction quickly fades and soon we're yearning for something else. Similarly, we tell our friends that our kids are our greatest joy. Research, however, suggests the arrival of children lowers parents' reported happiness, as they struggle with the daily stresses involved. "

The article goes on to state the experts' answers for why this so: we aren't designed to be happy, and we are inherently poor at forecasting the outcome of decisions which were made to increase our happiness.

Fine. Let's stipulate those points. But there is another reason which won't make it onto the pages of the Wall Street Journal: the paradox of consumerism. The more you rely on acquisitions to fuel happiness, the less happiness you actually experience.

Let's look at a little chart I've prepared to illustrate what we all know to be true: the more you buy, the less you actually get:

please go to www.oftwominds.com/blog.html to view the chart.

A story will help illustrate this chart. Back in the good old days of kingly wealth and power, the King was suffering from a severe bout of anhedonia (loss of pleasure, inability to enjoy). "I have everything," he moaned, "but enjoy nothing." Summoning his court Wise Man, he demanded, "I want to eat the finest meal in the land. Make it so."

The Wise Man nodded politely (after all, this was his Lord and Master), and asked, "Are you willing to follow my instructions to the letter, My Lord?" The King was so disgusted with his boredom and ennui that he enthusiastically agreed. The Wise Man took the King outside, and handed him a pick and shovel. He then directed the king to dig an irrigation ditch from one end of the field to the other. Though the task was far beneath his status as ruling monarch, so degraded was the King's life and spirit that he reluctantly obeyed.

After a long day toiling under the hot sun, the King's hands were blistered and a thirst and hunger he'd never experienced gripped his belly and mouth. As the setting sun touched the valley's rim, the Wise Man allowed the King to cease his ditch-digging. Beckoning the king to a nearby tree, the Wise Man then offered his master a dry crust of bread and a wooden cup of water. The King partook of this simple meal with gusto, and after finishing off the lowly bread, readily agreed with the Wise Man that this was indeed the finest meal in the kingdom.

Here we have a truth which has been well and truly lost to a nation drunk with acquisition and the profit-driven "manufacture" of endless desires for more. Taking a page from Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we can describe the physiological and social needs for sustenance, shelter and civil society as "authentic" in the sense that deprivation of these basics renders any human unhappy.

But alas, the profit potential in real food and modest shelter is limited. So a trillion-dollar industry attempts to instill in you a craving for sports drinks (salty sugar water), a Lexus (a Toyota with a different nameplate), a manicure (you're worth being coddled) and Special Status (you're a bigshot).

But in a terrible irony, each acquisition of a new product or service provides a shorter and less intense "pay-off" of happiness. At the climax of this process, the "consumer" (at this stage, every human being has been reduced to a "consumer") has hundreds of media channels, thousands of free songs, thousands of movies, hundreds of snacks and foods, limitless choices in clothing and electronic gewgaws--and yet rather than feel a limitless joy with this cornucopia, the "consumer" feels bored and dissatisfied.

This alienation from self and authenticity is the ultimate fulfillment of consumerism. That we have reached this end stage of alienation is painfully obvious in the obsession with "luxury goods" and the frenzy to shout "Look at me!" louder than anyone else. It is stating the obvious but still worth noting that those truly wealthy in happiness feel no desire to attract the attention or approval of others, nor do they suffer under the delusion that a new trinket or toy will add to their well-being.

I take no pleasure in foreseeing a long, deep recession; I do not welcome it, I simply observe the causal conditions which guarantee millions will suffer financial loss and ruin. Most of you see the same causal conditions and foresee the inevitable collapse of real estate valuations and the entire bubble of debt which fueled the "boom."

Putting the two together--a collapse of the financial bubble and the alienation of the "consumer"--I predict the next wave of marketing will be aimed at "authenticity."

As millions of once-middle class citizens find themselves struggling under mountains of debt they can never pay off, as they grasp the fundamental emptiness of their McMansion and Lexus and iPod (assuming they're able to keep them), then their anger at those who benefitted from the "boom" (such as hedge fund managers who raked in $300 million a year each) will grow to a white-hot fury, and marketers, PR hacks and advertising gurus will be running away from "luxury," "status" and "lifestyle" and toward "authentic" themes and labels.

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The Paradox of Plenty II : Manufacturing

Yesterday we looked at the paradox of plenty in resources: as supply (of fish, oil, etc.) rises with new extraction/harvesting technologies, prices drop and vast quantities of the resources are squandered in the mistaken view that it will be abundant forever. With prices low, there is no market incentive to conserve or even look at the non-market costs such as species extinction. (The market doesn't care if you dynamite the reefs to harvest the fish or poison the water to extract the gold.)

While you may think there is no "paradox of plenty" in manufactured goods--supply will always be tailored to match demand--there is indeed a paradox in manufacturing as well. As production ramps up to meet new demand, new producers join the frenzy. As demand slackens, the industry has too much capacity. Prices drop but this doesn't boost demand. Profits turn into losses and producers go bankrupt or are acquired, leaving either a monopoly or a cartel.

Of course some companies excel at creating products which are unique and therefore the price can be maintained at a high level--Apple and the iPod, for instance. But eventually either demand for iPods will be satiated or competitors will match its "cool" factor and over-capacity will emerge.

In industries like steel, there isn't much to differentiate manufacturers, and so these industries are especially vulnerable to over-capacity and collapse of profits. Take at look at this graph of China's skyrocketing steel production capacity: China is adding steel mills as if the demand will keep climbing at a permanently high rate. But where the demand rose quickly from 10 million tons to 20 million tons, the rise from 50 million tons to 60 million tons is much slower.

At some point, demand for additional steel will top out, even in China. But as this chart demonstrates, capacity is being added at a tremendous rate--to meet a future demand which will not exist. Once over-capacity is a reality, then the producers enter the no-win tailspin of lowering production and cutting prices as each tries to grab market share and stay afloat. Eventually, weaker hands fold and are bought out, or shuttered and the production idled.

As I have reported before, this has already come to pass in China in CRT televisions--a story reported in China Daily back in 2000. TV manufacturers were making more TV sets than the market could absorb, and price cuts had led to steep losses. The government had been forced to step in and fix prices.

The same cycle is setting up in flat-screen televisions now, with manufacturers in Korea, Japan and China ramping up huge capacity to produce a "permanent abundance" of flat-screen TVs--an abundance which at some point will far exceed demand.

Some industries have detoured this fate by creating "product cycles" in which the latest mobile-phone gimmicks (oops, I mean "features") spur new demand; and the auto industry has set up just such a replacement cycle as gas-hog vehicles will eventually have to be replaced by hybrids. But even industries which has prospered on ever-faster "product cycles" may find an exhaustion of demand as the global economy weakens. Consumers will realize the features on their current phone exceed their needs, and their Focus or Camry still has plenty of life left in it. Then the over-capacity being built in the global auto industry will suddenly become painfully visible--at least to the workers at plants which will be shuttered.

So what's the paradox of plenty here? Over-capacity creates abundance, but also guarantees prices dropping below costs, leading to a collapse of profits and producers. In the euphoria of giant new markets like China, it's easy to be swept up and not notice that the cycle exists even in China, where the manufacturing sector is so prodigious that it can exceed global demand for virtually any product.

To see the charts, please go to www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

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The Paradox of Plenty I

Let's explore the "paradox of plenty," of which there are many, in the next few days. I hope you'll find the concept as fascinating as I do. Interestingly, there are three different books with this title, and all address entirely different paradoxes of plenty.

The first, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States , is an academic look at the extremely tragic paradox known as "the oil curse:" the citizens of nations "blessed" with oil resources seem to end up poorer, not wealthier, as their nation's resources are extracted to depletion. The reasons are many, including poor governance (kleptocracies, dictatorships, oligarchies, "dictatorships of the proletariat" etc.) and human nature ("we're rich, it's unlimited, let's hire other people to take care of us").

The next two address paradoxes inherent in food. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America looks at abundance, social trends, dieting and hunger in America. To quote from Library Journal's review:

Levenstein explores the disturbing existence of hunger in the midst of agricultural abundance. Describing the economic, political, and cultural factors that have influenced the American diet, he exposes the role that major food processors, the medical establishment, and the American government have played in modifying the taste buds and nutritional ideas of its citizens while ignoring the plight of its increasing numbers of malnourished poor. He also examines the national obsession with dieting and the impact on eating habits of married women entering the work force in record numbers.

The third title looks at the apparent abundance of food in our world and the equally apparent misery of hunger: The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful World This book was produced by the Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, whose research has shown that though there is enough food for every human on the planet, the poor do not have access to it (unsurprisingly).

Is there a common thread linking these works? How about the interplay of markets, government and marketing? In the first, a global market for energy offers up great wealth to those with the resources, but the wealth is squandered by mismanagement, greed, corruption and a host of other human ills.

In the second, the abundance of food in free-market America creates the paradox that those without enough money (or money/nutrition management) can be malnourished even as the food industry's marketing machine cranks out new "taste treats," dining and diet fads to stimulate demand for needless/unhealthy products with vastly greater profit margins than (unprocessed/unpackaged) "real food."

In the third, the world's inability to equitably distribute the planet's food resources is highlighted. Stepping back a bit, here is my take on "resource extraction in a free market" a model which applies to any resource, any market, any place, any time:

please go to www.oftwominds.com/blog.html to see chart

My own favorite example of this process which has been well-documented (and largely ignored) is the over-fishing/stripping of the world's oceans for seafood. Study Spotlights Overfishing In Collapse Of Marine Ecosystems (Science daily) Overfishing Could Take Seafood Off the Menu by 2048 (Scientific American)

In 1994, seafood may have peaked. According to an analysis of 64 large marine ecosystems, which provide 83 percent of the world's seafood catch, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons since that year. And if that trend is not reversed, total collapse of all world fisheries should hit around 2048. "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood," notes marine biologist Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University.

Marine biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, gathered a team of 14 ecologists and economists, including Palumbi, to analyze global trends in fisheries. In addition to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization stretching back to 1950, the researchers examined 32 controlled experiments in various marine ecosystems, observations from 48 marine protected areas, and historical data on 12 coastal fisheries for the last 1,000 years. The latter study shows that among commercially important species alone, 91 percent have seen their abundance halved, 38 percent have nearly disappeared and 7 percent have gone extinct.

Although the trend is grim, the study of protected areas offers some hope that marine ecosystems can rebound, according to the paper presenting the analysis in the November 3 issue of Science. The 48 studied showed an overall increase of 23 percent in species diversity and a fourfold increase in available catch. "It's not a miracle. It's something that is do-able, it's just something that requires a big chunk of political will to do it," Worm observes. "We have a 1,000-, probably 10,000-year habit of taking the oceans for granted and moving from one species to the next, or replacing it with a technological fix like aquaculture. To me, the major roadblock is we have to change our perception of what the ocean is." Should we fail, we may lose the ocean's bounty entirely.

In other words: when resources appear limitless, we squander them because the price is so "cheap" that conservation "pays no dividend"/isn't worth the effort. Then as depletion begins, prices rise, but the damage is already done. As prices rise further, it drives extractors to harvest the last fish/tusk/drop of oil, etc.

Now maybe the fish stocks will recover, but if they do, it's only because the market was limited by government restrictions (establishing protected areas). Where no government intervention occurs, then the fishing stocks are driven to near-zero or extinction. Examples abound (see above); do your own research on the collapse of sea bass off Chile, cod off the Atlantic seaboard, and falling catches in the Caribbean.

It would be nice to believe (as in Santa Claus) that the global fishing fleets will magically lay themselves off, reduce their fleets and all agree to protected areas. But the actual facts are that the fleets are just roaming further and dragging bigger and deeper nets to catch what few (marketable) fish remain. (The "unmarketable fish"--some 70% at times--are tossed overboard as chum. That's how you lose an entire ecology and food chain.)

Various apologists will instantly stand up to say, "acquaculture will save the day," but but it's not that simple. If you'd like to see "market acquaculture" at work, go to Ko Chang or other coastal areas of Thailand, and look at the huge holes dug to raise prawns. They're dead zones now, breeding pools for mosquitos, because it made market sense to boost the crop with biocides which quickly poison the water and the surrounding soil. And why bother filling in the bomb craters? (that's what they look like) Nobody's paying me to do that, buddy; that's not my job.

We also get unforeseen delights like monoculture farm-raised salmon escaping into the wild (there's no market forces restricting that) where they infect the wild gene pool with resistent diseases. None of these after-effects are punished or inhibited by the market whatsoever; as my chart shows, as waste leads inevitably to scarcity, prices skyrocket which drives the increasingly desperate miners/fishermen/elephant hunters/oil extractors to seek out and extract the last resources, as these now command exorbidant prices in the marketplace. (see the market for ivory as an example.)

Another excuse is "a substitute will be found as prices climb." There is no substitute for the world's oceans and their complex foodchains and ecologies. A fish farm does not replace the ocean. The market drives right to the bitter end of depletion and extinction, time and again, unless restrained by force--consensual or otherwise.

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