Industry/ Promises
Miss Grey, Growth and profit, Greta is not happy, Ponzi revisited, Corporate games
My pal Peter and I were just hangin’: classes done, slouched in chairs, knees up against the table, smart-ass versing with no meaning. The lunch room was mostly empty when Miss Grey zeroed in on us. She was an older, prim woman with pointy glasses - a no nonsense type and head of the English Department with a small booklet of verse to her credit, “Poems for Canadian Students”, that included “Kubla Khan”, and “The Cremation of Sam McGee” among other poetic gems. Having never spoken to either of us, we were untroubled that she would pass us by without notice, lingering cockroaches on the wall that we were. Then suddenly there she was, front and centre. Our feet dropped to the floor. “Well aren’t you two the epitome of Industry!”, she said. I recall us both smiling respectfully and nodding in agreement before she turned and walked away without uttering another word. We didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Years later I realized Miss Grey was giving us more credit than we deserved, ironically suggesting we were the exact opposite of industrious.
The merit of industriousness began with the Industrial Revolution during the mid 1700s in Britain. Mechanization in the textile industry paved the way for new innovations and methods. Steam and water ushered in sweeping economic and social changes, including the division of labour between labourers and managerial hierarchies, as well as industrial pollution and urban crowding. It remains debatable if the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
In many ways the personal benefits of industrial technologies - material wealth, life expectancy, health, leisure, etc. - have been significant, but their impact on the global environment and the continual imperative for ‘growth’ might be devastating. It is not difficult to connect the dots between the beginning of industrialization and the challenges of climate change currently being addressed by world leaders in Glasgow. Unfortunately, there is always a lot of high-minded pep talk in such political arenas and not much follow up. Greta Thunberg has publicly expressed her skepticism of politicians, no longer trusting the “blah, blah, blah”.
Although industrial nations continue to prosper, more than 856 million people in the world are undernourished, 14 thousand died of starvation today (as of this writing), and 878 million have no access to a source of safe drinking water.
At best, politicians can attempt to legislate their promises but ultimately must bend to the fickle masses or lose their leadership. They are also guided by self-interest: most recently, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who amassed considerable personal wealth by investing in fossil fuels, has been instrumental in deconstructing powerful climate change provisions that would have quickly shut down coal and gas-fired power plants and replaced them with wind and solar power.
Ultimately it is industry that must act responsibly, but modern industry can be unscrupulous in their pursuit of growth and profit, just as it was in the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. Too often the apparent good intention of a company is not for the greater good but rather a veiled ploy for greater market share. The practice of political lobbying by large and generous special interest groups - the NRA, gas and oil, big Pharma, among others - is nothing less than sanctioned influence peddling. It becomes a tangled web of misplaced values, money over ethical oversight.
An industrious economy results in monetary profit and growth, which is good we’re told, even at the expense of our health and well being.
A principle rule in business marketing and promotion is that if you control the vocabulary you control the conversation. Yet boundless growth for the sake of power and monetary gain is not sustainable growth. Corporations and Industry that grow too large to fail undermine global economies and democratic freedom. Profit begets more growth and greater profit which begets more growth which… begins to sound suspiciously like a Ponzi scheme. Named after Charles Ponzi (who knew?), these schemes require a constant flow of new money to survive. It is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from recent investors.
At the civic level, the growth of suburban development follows a similar pattern. Multiple levels of government funding contribute to revenue pools for suburban growth, with higher levels of taxation, construction, and employment opportunities. Meanwhile, the debt load of large urban areas is growing. Older neighbourhoods are not self-sustaining after 20+ years (road and infrastructure repairs, emergency services, etc.), and must also tap into the revenue stream. But as long as there is a steady flow of revenue everybody’s happy, so the cycle repeats itself and the sprawl continues.
In Industry, the woman kneeling in the night is naked, vulnerable and submissive to industrial greed and environmental exploitation in exchange for habit forming creature comforts - the appearance of prosperity, and a comfortable lifestyle. Danger lurks in the shadows however and she is being watched, passively and in silence. Everywhere in the world we are all vulnerable to the promised prosperity of industrialization, the Promises of the West.
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Pevek, Russia is a small port town on the Arctic Ocean capitalizing on our warming climate with a refurbished port, a new plant for generating electricity, paved roads, a repaired library and a new esplanade along the shoreline. Farmers are planting corn where it never grew before and there’s a new commercial fishing industry. New mining and energy projects are underway, and most hopeful is the prospect of year-round Arctic shipping as a shorter alternative, by two weeks, to the Suez canal. Although Russia is the world’s 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases and has vowed to be carbon neutral by 2060, the motherland’s strategy is that, although climate change may be an enormous threat for the future, why not take advantage of the commercial opportunities it offers in the present? The government and a consortium of companies have invested $10 billion to develop the northeast passage.
October, 2021
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Big Tobacco, Old Tricks
By employing the same tactics it used to drive policymaking from the 1970s-90s, Big Tobacco has become successful in influencing pro industry e-cigarette laws. E-cigarettes began as an unregulated product until Phillip Morris and other big tobacco companies spent $6 million lobbying to restrict sales and use.
UCSF, 2016
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I Need A Drink
Alcohol industry social responsibility schemes strengthen their own commercial interests while failing to reduce harmful alcohol use, according to a worldwide study. Far from confirming industry claims that they can 'do good' with corporate campaigns, the findings suggest that the public health benefits are likely to be minimal. In fact, 11% of the industry actions had the potential for doing harm.
University of Connecticut, 2018
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Big Pharma: On Second Thought I’ll Have A Pill
A new study estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry's claim. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar in 2004 on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion. The study's findings supports the position that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is marketing-driven and challenges the perception of a research-driven, life-saving, pharmaceutical industry.
York University, NY
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Waiter, hold the fat. I’ll just have some sugar, please
In recent years, high-profile claims in the academic literature and popular press have alleged that the sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and emphasize the dangers of dietary fat instead, derailing the course of the national dietary policy.
Columbia University, 2018
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