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MIT Talking Medical Device Collaboration at ESC
August 18, 2011
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created its Medical Electronic Device Realization Center (MEDRC) to develop technologies for enabling affordable and accessible delivery of services to patients, according to its leaders.
MEDRC -- a collaboration between MIT and two industry entities, Analog Devices, Inc. and GE Global Research -- expects revolutionary improvements in multiple areas of the medical industry.
"A radical change is taking place in how medical care is being delivered, with delivery moving to 'point of care' rather than having patients travel to a doctor's office or hospital," said Charles Sodini, LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and co-founder of MEDRC.
Sodini will deliver a keynote at ESC Boston. (See: Road to ESC Boston: Samsung Galaxy Tablet Teardown.)
"MEDRC will develop technologies for patient-monitoring devices, point-of-care instruments and the communication technology to connect patients to caregivers. These technologies will enable affordable and accessible delivery of services to patients across the globe."
The MEDRC will foster the creation of prototype devices and intellectual property, and will serve as a focal point, bringing together large business, venture-funded startups, and the medical community, according to Sodini.
The MEDRC is a multi-disciplined endeavor led by three MIT professors: Sodini, of MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, Brian W. Anthony, director of the master of engineering in manufacturing program (Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity), and Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (Research Laboratory of Electronics).
"ADI is excited to work with MIT on researching new technology that furthers this movement and gives patients more control over their health and wellness," said Patrick O'Doherty, vice president, Healthcare Group, Analog Devices, Inc. in a statement.
ADI engineers and MEDRC scientists will research technologies such as novel sensors coupled with smart algorithms to process and reduce the data for communication with extremely low energy.
GE is interested in simplifying routine ultrasound measurements and improve the quality and diagnostic capabilities of ultrasound imaging.
MEDRC researchers will work with GE's ultrasound research team on probe and control algorithms designed to improve ultrasound imaging and diagnostic capabilities.
Sodini will discuss the expected medical electronics breakthroughs in a keynote at DesignMED on September 28 at 9:30 a.m. The conference is an ancillary conference to the Embedded Systems Conference held that week.
Sodini's research interests are focused on medical electronic systems for monitoring and imaging, which require state-of-the-art mixed signal ICs and systems with extremely low energy dissipation. Sodini is a Fellow of the IEEE.
If you'd like to find out about attending ESC Boston, click here. Here is a full list of all conference sessions.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Though Title IX encompasses many aspects of education, most people associate the law with athletics. Title IX's been credited with opening competitive sports to millions of American girls and women. For more now, we're joined by Nancy Hogshead-Makar. She's a three-time Olympic gold medal swimmer, former president of Women's Sports Foundation, and she's now a professor teaching federal gender-equity law at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville. She joins us on the line from Kenilworth, Illinois. Thanks so much for being with us.
NANCY HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: You were a gold medal swimmer in the 1984 Summer Games.
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: I sure was - three gold medals.
SIMON: So, how did you become a competitive swimmer? Do you think Title IX played a role?
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Oh, no doubt about it. When I was 14 years old, I was actually ranked number one in the world. And a reporter asked at that time, they said, hey, you're going to train for the 1980 Olympics, which were three years away. And I said, well, sure, you know, don't women physically peak right around the age of 17 to 18? I knew women quit right around 17 or 18, but I just thought it was because their bodies gave out. Fast forward two or three years, and suddenly it was like in 1978, 1979, it was like a match got lit to the country and suddenly, whoosh, just lots of sports opportunities opened up. And I could've gone to college just about anywhere I wanted to go on full scholarship.
SIMON: Are there still barriers to women in sports, as far as you're concerned?
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: In every measurable criteria women lag behind men, whether you're talking about number for participation opportunities - girls are about 1.3 million opportunities behind boys in high school and 50,000 in college.
SIMON: The benefits of participating in organized sports for men or women are so widespread you want them to be open to women, too.
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Absolutely. Because what Title IX has taught us is it's given us an opportunity to look at what a sports experience means for a kid. So looking at - what happens to those women who - do they get more education? Do they go into non-traditional fields? Are they in the workforce full-time? And the answers to all those are yes.
There's no reasons to think those same things wouldn't be true for boys as well but Title IX have given scientists and social scientists this opportunity to be able to study and be able to say from a causation standpoint that sports isn't just associated with better education, better long-term health, more full-time workforce, but it actually causes it.
SIMON: There has been a complaint that one of the maybe unintended effects of Title IX, when it comes to high school and collegiate sports, has been that whenever the millions of women who've been able to participate it's also meant quotas and the curtailment of sports that are important to people but considered relatively minor. And I'm thinking of, for example, of fencing and wrestling.
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: I have a couple of responses to that. One, is that for both boys and girls sports participation are at all time highs for both high school and college. So this idea that women sports are taking away from men's sports is just empirically not true. My second response is that I have three beautiful children. I have a boy who's 11, twin girls who are 6. When my son was born for those first five years he enjoyed the royal treatment. He got all of our attention, all of our resources. When the girls came along he got less. Now, he's not being discriminated against because of his gender; he has to share family resources with a bigger pool of people.
So it's unethical for schools to blame Title IX when there is some kind of budget crisis and they do have to cut something, any more than it would be unethical for me to blame my daughters to my son when he says, hey, how come I don't get to play another sport?
SIMON: Eleven and 6 is still fairly young but do you foresee your children becoming athletes?
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Oh, absolutely. I think it is one of the most important things...
SIMON: Well, they are the son and daughters of an Olympic gold medalist, but...
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Right. I think I'm going to do with my kids exactly what my parents did with all three of us kids, which was we don't care what sport you play, but you've got to find one. The most important thing that I got out of my swimming career is not the gold medals; the most important thing I got is that I did it.
I went to practice on days that I did not want to with every cell in my body. But I was committed to something bigger than being in a good mood on any one particular day.
SIMON: Nancy Hogshead-Makar is an Olympic gold medalist and law professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, speaking with us about the impact of Title IX. Thanks so much.
HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Thank you very much for having me on.
SIMON: You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Sorry for any inconvenience, but I hope you will join me at this new address.
Bill Totten
governments react with draconian measures - such as steep and sudden domestic price rises or severe restrictions on personal mobility with accompanying disruptions in value chains and significant economic dislocations. By 2020, the repetition of this volatile three-step pattern in many areas of the energy economy results in a temporary global economic slowdown ... Although change must and does occur, the turnaround takes a decade because large-scale transformations of the energy system are required.The 2008 report was also interesting in describing the geopolitical result - that "major resource holders are increasingly the rule makers rather than the rule takers. They use their growing prominence in the world to influence international policies, particularly when it comes to matters they insist are internal such as human rights and democratic governance." In other words, no Egypts or Tunisias in the scarce-energy age. No one will object, Shell said, because they will need sweetheart deals with the energy-producing countries in order to obtain what they can and "do not want to rock the energy boat they have just managed to board".
High domestic prices and exceptionally demanding standards imposed by governments provoke significant advances in energy efficiency. Eventually, locally developed alternative supplies - biofuels, wind, and thermal solar - also contribute on a much greater scale than before. By 2030, healthy economic growth is restored, with particular vibrancy in the new energy sector that has received a massive stimulus to innovation through this difficult period.Links:
by John Kozy
Global Research (February 04 2011)
Ah, democracy, rule by the people, the promised path to just government and the end of tyranny. What ever happened to it?
Finian Cunningham writes,
From 1945 to 1997, there was at least the semblance that the British Labour Party in particular represented the interests of the working and lower middle classes. But under the 'reforming' leadership of Tony Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, 'New Labour' has become indistinguishable from the other main parties in terms of slavishly fawning over big business and the wealthy elite. Prior to the 1997 election, which brought Labour to government, one senior Conservative smugly noted that, in terms of economic policy, there was 'not a cigarette paper between' the Thatcherite Tory Party and Blair's New Labour.
In America, this has been the reality for decades. How many times have the people had to choose between the least evil of two candidates? America has but one political party - the Republicrat.
A recent report in the Guardian goes,
While the US and Britain slide towards oligarchy, the forced elections in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought no good. The west's proudest export to the Islamic world this past decade has been democracy. That is, not real democracy, which is too complicated, but elections. They have been exported at the point of a gun and a missile to Iraq and Afghanistan, to 'nation-build' these states and hence 'defeat terror'. When apologists are challenged to show some good resulting from the shambles, they invariably reply: 'It has given Iraqis and Afghans freedom to vote'.
But democracy has taken an even more sinister turn - fraud and the rejection of results.
When Hamas won the election in the Gaza Strip by a large majority the results were rejected by Fatah and the western nations that had previously advocated that very election and had agreed to abide by the result.
The AP reported that
Hassan Turabi, the leader of the Islamic Popular Congress Party, said ... his group would reject the results of [the] vote [in the Sudan] and challenge them in court ... Election observers say the vote fell short of international standards.
The BBC writing on Iran's last election reported that
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... won some 62.6% of the vote in an election marked by a high turnout of 85%, official figures show. Supporters of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi have cried foul and clashed with riot police in Tehran, despite a ban on public protests.
It was widely reported that the 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan was characterized by lack of security, low voter turnout and widespread ballot stuffing, intimidation, and other electoral fraud. Two months later, under heavy US and ally pressure, a second round run-off vote between incumbent President Hamid Karzai and his main rival Abdullah Abdullah was announced for November 7 2009. However, Abdullah announced that he would no longer be participating in the run-off because his demands for changes in the electoral commission had not been met, and a "transparent election is not possible".
When former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqiyya list won the election in Iraq by two seats, Nouri Maliki mounted a legal challenge and suggested that six of the winning candidates should be disqualified because of alleged ties to the former Baath government.
And now Paul Craig Roberts writes,
The hypocrisy of the US government is yet again demonstrated in full bore force. The US government invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, laid waste to much of the countries including entire villages and towns, and massacred untold numbers of civilians in order "to bring democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now after days of Egyptians in the streets demanding 'Mubarak must go', the US government remains aligned with its puppet Egyptian ruler, even suggesting that Mubarak, after running a police state for three decades, is the appropriate person to implement democracy in Egypt.
What is one to conclude from all of this? Is it that democracy is wonderful so long as those already in power remain there?
This democratic dementia is the result of a long term trend.
Aristotle, one of the world's deepest thinkers, is often blamed for defining mankind as rational even though he never did. He did, however, consider mankind as rational, and he used that notion in an example when writing about definition, which is, I suspect, the source of the misbelief.
That Aristotle chose to use the word man in this context suggests that the notion of mankind as rational was quite common in classical Greece, so common that no one would question it and sidetrack the discussion about definition. After all, Aristotle was a student of Plato's and Plato's Dialogues provide us with a model of a rational man - Socrates. But most of the characters in the Dialogues are not rational to the extent that Socrates is. They are, however, persuadable when presented with evidence and logical argument. And I suspect that that's what Aristotle means when he writes, in the Nicomachean Ethics, that human beings have a rational principle; he means that human beings are persuadable.
The Greek notion of rationality, however, was quite different from ours. In the phrase "zoon logikon" (animal-rational) "logikon" is not exactly what we mean by "rational". That term, to the Greeks, refers to the power to think and other attributes needed to distinguish humans from all other animals. At least one of these attributes is believing, as, for instance, in the statement man is a believing animal. So to the Greeks, a person whose mind is cluttered with beliefs would be a zoon logikon. The Greeks would have distinguished such a person from a logical person, and at least Plato and Aristotle valued a logical person more highly than the merely rational. Not so today!
Today, at least in America, beliefs, which are often merely unsupportable opinions, seem to be valued higher than knowledge which is based on evidence and supported by logic. So, in a sense, creedal man has replaced rational man. Belief has come to trump knowledge. Mankind has become creedal, ideological.
Ideological groups, however, consist of true believers who cannot be persuaded. When an ideology is adopted, it is as though evidence and logic are no longer needed. The ideology contains an answer to every question, a solution to every problem. Evidence, logic, even truth become irrelevant.
In doing so, however, mankind has divided itself into impersuasible groups that clash with each other. Ordinarily, people consider such groups to be religious. Where their ideologies differ, for instance, Moslems and Christians will never agree. People holding incompatible notions cannot agree. Sooner or later, the result is either a religious war or total separation. But antagonistic groups arise everywhere ideology is used to guide human behavior. Capitalists and Socialists will never agree; Capitalism and Socialism are incompatible ideologies. Neither will Democrats (who truly represent the people) and Republicans (who represent the commercial class) or environmentalists and exploitationists. Every ideology becomes a religion, and every religion has its own solution to every problem. Because mankind has abandoned knowledge for belief, peace on earth has become an impossible dream.
Even logical enterprises like science have become creeds. Just as Christians believe that the second coming will solve all of mankind's problems, many now believe that technology will. But no one knows that; it's a mere belief. When the results of technology are examined, it becomes obvious that technology is at least as harmful as it is beneficial. It, after all, has given mankind weapons of massive destruction which may be used to annihilate everyone. It has also given mankind the means that enable governments to watch everyone. Technology has provided governments with totalitarian tools that are more effective than any mankind has previously known.
Plato and Aristotle surely must have known how important belief was even in the minds of their fellow Greeks and the deleterious effects of it. So, both Plato and Aristotle sought to replace belief in people's minds with knowledge which is what every Platonic dialog does. Plato and Aristotle knew that only when mankind adopts evidence and logic can people become persuasible, and only persuasion can remove the ideological conflicts that divide mankind into antagonistic groups.
Recently, Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair debated the question, Can religion be a force for good in the world? On the one hand, Hitchens stated that we don't need divine permission to know what good action is, but he also stated that we can't rely on people to be innately good. So then what standard do we rely on? He never tells us.
Blair, on the other hand, argued that we shouldn't blame religion solely for the world's problems. So then, what is it about human nature that causes some people, in the name of religious and political systems, to do bad things? This question is also never answered.
Blair admitted that some people have committed evil in the name of religion, but this has been completely outweighed by its goods. Hitchens continually denounced religion as fostering a mentality that makes "good people do unkind things".
The question debated was never resolved because both debaters argue from their beliefs. Each debater talks past the other. But the most interesting part of the debate came when instead of making a closing statement, Blair and Hitchens decided to take one last question: 'Which of your opponent's arguments do you find most convincing?'
Blair answered first. "I think that the most convincing argument is - and the argument that people of faith have got to deal with is actually the argument Christopher has just made - which is that the bad that is done in the name of religion is intrinsically grounded in the scripture of religion. That is the single most difficult argument." He must have had in mind the Torah's exhortations to exterminate whole nations, men, women and children and other similar passages.
Hitchens said: "The remark Tony made that I most agreed with this evening, I'll just hope that doesn't sound too minimal, was when he said that if religion was to disappear, things would by no means, as it were, automatically be okay."
In the end, Blair recognized that religious ideologies in the form of scripture contain evil aspects. Hitchens, on the other hand, admits that the elimination of religion alone will not make mankind good.
Both, of course, are true, but both also fail to see that the elimination of belief and its replacement by truth arrived at by evidence and logical argument is the only way to resolve the question, for otherwise, neither side can persuade the other. Without the willingness of people to accept only logical evidence based on fact or agreed upon assumptions, no one will ever persuade anyone of anything. It is this unwillingness based on unquestionable ideologies that makes persuasion impossible.
The topic of this debate could just as well have been either of the following two: Can belief be a force for good in the world? Can ideology be a force for good in the world? And the answer to the original and these two is no. Only knowledge sought and applied in moral ways can effectively be a force for good in the world.
Recently, members of Congress and the President have been at odds over compromising which seems difficult to achieve. The Republicans are willing to accept something the Democrats want only if the Republicans get all of what they want, which is a paradigm case of an ideological conflict. Nothing good can come of it. But nothing good can come from compromise either. Combining some of the beliefs derived from two antagonistic ideologies always results in unworkable policies. For instance, when the right opposes social programs that the left advocates and a compromise occurs in which the right accepts some limited social programs and the left accepts the limitations, the result is inadequate and ineffective policy. The same is true of most of the social problems that afflict America today. All attempted solutions are compromised into ineffectiveness. This won't change until the ideologies are abandoned and problem solving relies on evidence and logic. In all cases religion, in the wide sense of ideology, can never improve mankind's condition.
This addiction to opinion, each person being entitled to his own, and the unwarranted notion that those who fight for their beliefs are "principled" is why democracies teeter between antagonistic belief systems and are unable to resolve any social problems. Each party strives to repeal the policies enacted by the other which paralyzes the political process. The problem is worldwide. Democracy itself is falling into this ideological abyss. When elections are held the losers now routinely reject the outcome yelling "fraud"! Often it leads to demonstrations and violence. When people reject the grounds for persuasion, conflict is the inevitable result. Democracy cannot function when people are not persuasible.
John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the US Army during the Korean War, he spent twenty years as a university professor and another twenty years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.
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Birth | Difficult:requires a custom charter issued by a state legislature | Easy: general incorporation charter allows automatic chartering | ||
Life span | Limited terms | No limits | ||
"Shape- shifting" | Corporations not allowed to own stock in other companies; restricted to activities specified in charter | Corporations free to pursue acquisitions and spin-offs | ||
Mobility | Usually restricted to home state | No restrictions | ||
Adaptability | Restricted to activities specified in charter | Allowed to pursue multiple specified lines of business and initiate or acquire new ones at company's discretion | ||
"Conscience" | Actions constrained by shareholder liability and by threat of charter revocation | Fewer constraints due to limited liability, disuse of charter revocation, and tort reforms | ||
"Will" | Managerial action hampered by legal status of minority shareholders and of corporate agents | Legal revisions enable consolidation of management's power | ||
Size | Limited by charter restrictions | Asset limits removed; antitrust laws generally not effective | ||
Constitutional rights | Functional only | Steady acquisition of constitutional rights | ||
1846 | New York | 1864 | Nevada | 1875 | Maryland | |||
1846 | Iowa | 1864 | Louisiana | 1876 | Colorado | |||
1848 | Illinois | 1865 | Missouri | 1876 | Texas | |||
1848 | Wisconsin | 1866 | Nebraska | 1889 | Idaho | |||
1849 | California | 1867 | Alabama | 1889 | North Dakota | |||
1850 | Michigan | 1868 | North Carolina | 1889 | South Dakota | |||
1851 | Ohio | 1868 | Georgia | 1889 | Montana | |||
1851 | Maryland | 1870 | Tennessee | 1889 | Washington | |||
1851 | Indiana | 1871 | Arkansas | 1890 | Mississippi | |||
1855 | Kansas | 1872 | West Virginia | 1895 | Utah | |||
1857 | Minnesota | 1874 | Pennsylvania | 1897 | Delaware | |||
1857 | Oregon | 1875 | New Jersey | 1902 | Virginia | |||
*Source: Liggett v. Lee (1933). |
As with constitutional law, so with the private law of contracts, of property, and of torts. Judge-made rules in those fundamental categories had the result of transferring the social costs of private enterprise from the enterprise itself to the workingman or to society at large. Tort law provides apt illustration. Under its doctrines, a person who willfully or negligently harms another's person or property must answer by paying money damages. The analogue of contract, which is a consensual obligation, a tort is a nonconsensual legal obligation. Who, then, bore the costs, in accidents and in deaths, of the new industrialism? Not the businessman. Not the corporation. The worker himself. (Often those workers were children.) And who bore the costs of pollution and other social costs? Society at large. How did this come about? In tort law judges created doctrines of "contributory negligence", "assumption of risk", and the "fellow servant rule", all of which served to insulate the enterprise from liability. By "freely" taking a job, said the judges, the workers "assumed the risk" of any accident that might occur.
New York until 1881 | $2,000,000 |
New York 1881-1890 | $5,000,000 |
Pennsylvania until 1863 | $500,000 |
Pennsylvania after 1863 | $5,000,000 |
Alabama until 1876 | $200,000 |
Alabama 1876-1896 | $1,000,000 |
Arizona after 1864 | $5,000,000 |
Illinois 1852-1857 | $300,000 |
Illinois after 1857 | $1,000,000 |
Maine 1862-1867 | $50,000 |
Maine 1867-1876 | $200,000 |
Maine 1876-1883 | $500,000 |
Maine 1883-1891 | $2,000,000 |
Maine after 1891 | $10,000,000 |
Vermont | $1,000,000 |
New Hampshire | $1,000,000 |
Massachusetts 1851-1855 | $200,000 |
Massachusetts after 1855 | $500,000 |
Michigan 1846-1885 | $100,000 |
Michigan after 1885 | $5,000,000 |
1 | General Electric | US | 372 | |
2 | Microsoft | US | 327 | |
3 | ExxonMobil | US | 300 | |
4 | Wal-Mart | US | 273 | |
5 | Citigroup | US | 255 | |
6 | Pfizer | US | 249 | |
7 | Intel | US | 204 | |
8 | British Petroleum | UK | 201 | |
9 | Johnson & Johnson | US | 198 | |
10 | Royal Dutch/Shell | Holland/UK | 190 | |
13 | GlaxoSmithKline | UK | 145 | |
14 | NTT DoCoMo | Japan | 138 | |
15 | Merck | US | 131 | |
16 | Coca-Cola | US | 130 | |
17 | Vodafone Group | US | 127 | |
19 | Verizon | US | 125 | |
20 | Cisco Systems | US | 124 | |
21 | Procter & Gamble | US | 117 | |
22 | Novartis | Switzerland | 114 | |
23 | Home Depot | US | 114 | |
24 | Philip Morris | US | 113 | |
25 | Total Fina Elf | France | 109 | |
* Source: Global 2002 list, Financial Times (May 13 2002) |
Nace has done a great job of assembling the history of how corporations gained control our political system. If you want to know what happened, buy his book and read it. Here is a snip from the introduction.
-- Jay Hanson
Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of America (2003, 2005) by Ted Nace http://www.amazon.com/Gangs-America-Corporate-Disabling-Democracy/dp/1576753190
On the morning of August 2 2002, millions of Americans turned on their TVs to see an unusual spectacle: a high-level corporate executive in handcuffs, being paraded by law enforcement officials in front of the news media. The executive was Scott Sullivan, chief financial officer of the telecommunications firm WorldCom. Along with fellow executive David Myers, Sullivan was charged with hiding $3.85 billion in company expenses, conspiring to commit securities fraud, and filing false information with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The combined maximum penalties from the charges were sixty-five years. In response to the arrests, Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters, "Corporate executives who cheat investors, steal savings, and squander pensions will meet the judgment they fear and the punishment they deserve".
Now consider a different crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B F Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing. In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation. Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel-powered General Motors buses.
By 1949, more than one hundred electric transit systems in forty-five cities had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit antitrust violations. But the penalty turned out to be negligible. The judge set the fine at $5,000 for each company. H C Grossman, treasurer of General Motors and a key player in the scheme, was fined one dollar. After the conviction, the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. By 1955, 88 percent of the country's electric streetcar network was gone.
Both the Scott Sullivan case and the National City Lines case fit the traditional definition of crime: laws were broken, the legal system intervened. But the second case suggests that the larger the crime, the more the boundaries between "crime" and "business as usual" begin to blur. As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once said, "Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it".
Young may have overstated things a bit, but the observation encapsulates a basic truth about American society. Business does tend to get its way, acting by means of a nebulous force known as "corporate power" that drives much of what happens in both the public and private spheres. But there are a few details to work out. What is the nature of this power? Exactly how does it work? Does the law instantly conform to the needs and wants of those one hundred businessmen? What happens when corporate America finds its wishes thwarted by constitutional barriers? Who decides what is "public" and what is "private"? Who defines the nature of "crime" versus "business as usual"?
In order to answer such questions, one challenge is merely to begin seeing a phenomenon that surrounds us so completely and continuously. I've spent most of my working life in the corporate world, founding and running a company that publishes how-to books about computers. In that world the corporation is the air you breathe. There is no questioning whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. Nor is there any thought about where the corporation - this particular institutional form - comes from. You assume that corporations have always been a natural part of the American system of "democracy and free enterprise". But even as I pursued my business, questions lurked in the back of my mind, some of which had been triggered as early as my high school years.
I grew up in southwestern North Dakota, and my first summer job was building trails in the Badlands for the US Forest Service. One day, I learned that a large energy corporation had applied to strip-mine a spot called the Burning Coal Vein, a rugged area where at night deep fissures emitted a glow caused by smoldering veins of coal, ignited long ago by lightning strikes or prairie fires. Along the hillsides, columnar junipers reminiscent of the trees in Van Gogh's "Starry Night" stood like silent watchers draped in tunics. Piles of scoria - brilliant red, orange, and purple ceramic shards - covered the ground, the metamorphosed products of shale baked by the intense underground heat. It was like being in an immortal potter's workshop, where every footstep made a tinkling sound as the scoria broke under your feet. That someone could dare propose destroying a place of such beauty in exchange for a few thousand tons of low-grade coal stunned me. But, of course, the entity planning the mine wasn't a someone but a something - a corporation. Although people in the company may well have cared, the corporation itself didn't.
After college, I started working as a community organizer for a group of farmers and ranchers in North Dakota who were opposed to a vast expansion of strip-mining being proposed by a number of large companies. The shadow cast by these corporations across farms and ranches was not just a metaphorical one. The machines used in strip mines are quite literally of an awesome physical scale. When I saw Jurassic Park I experienced a feeling of deja vu - it reminded me of being in a strip mine. To extract the coal underneath millions of acres of productive farmland and ranchland, the mining companies have to peel away the overlying layers of plant-nurturing soil, water-bearing aquifers, and rock. The peeling is done by immense, crane-like earth-eaters called draglines, which soar into the air the length of a football field. Like long-necked dinosaurs, the draglines make their way slowly amid ridges of rubble. Using tooth-edged buckets large enough to hold three Greyhound buses, they perform a drop-drag-lift-swivel maneuver, dropping the giant bucket, dragging it until it overflows, then suddenly jerking tons of dirt and rock high into the air, swiveling with surprising grace, and finally dumping the load onto the spoil piles. Especially at night, when intense lights illuminate the machinery and the rubble, the impression is hair-raising - a specter of monsters feeding upon the earth. And then you remember that the rubble being moved and dumped had been someone's pasture, favorite hillside, or alfalfa field. Reclamation? The companies promised that they would restore the land, but given the semiarid conditions, the fragility of the soil, and the complexities of such critical factors as hydrology and salinity, such assurances rang hollow.
You couldn't help but be affected by the courage of the families who carried on a daily existence next to the mines. I recall sitting in the kitchen of a wheat farmer named Werner Benfit and his elderly mother Anna, looking out at the advancing edge of North American Coal Company's Indian Head Mine near Zap, an ordinary town except for its Dr Seussian name. Even though the towering spoil piles of the mine had come literally to the edge of the Benfits' property, chain-smoking Werner never lost his sense of humor. Anna brought out a plate of cookies and Werner told about the "suit" from North American Coal who had recently paid a visit. The executive had told Anna that she could name any price in the world for her land. "I don't know about that", replied Anna, "but do you think you could move your spoil pile back a little ways so the rocks stop rolling onto my lawn"?
My boss was a genial Norwegian-American rancher named Randolph Nodland. Randolph had spent years fighting a company called Nokota, which had surreptitiously acquired the mining rights to thousands of acres of land and now threatened a number of farms and ranches with the possibility of an immense strip mine and an accompanying synthetic fuels plant.
One summer evening, as Randolph and I passed the time over pitchers of beer in the Shamrock Bar downstairs from our small office, he told me about a funeral he had attended the previous week at his local country church, Vang Lutheran. Flowers had been brought by the family of the deceased, but as Randolph took his place in the pews, a particularly large bouquet caught his eye. On a card the inscription read: "With deepest sympathies, Nokota, Inc".
The memory of the funeral raised a mixture of emotions, which passed like prairie clouds across Randolph's weathered face - disgust, anger, amusement. The funeral bouquet was just one of a variety of "personal" gestures by the company, including congratulatory cards sent to graduating high school seniors, booths at local fairs, and sponsorship of sports teams, all designed to ingratiate Nokota Inc. with the local community.
This particular gesture, though, crossed the line, and I knew Randolph would make sure the story of the grotesque social miscue made the rounds. In relating the encounter with the bouquet, the mere raising of an eyebrow would be enough to define and convey the insult - and having delivered that cue himself, Randolph could be assured that the message would pass from person to person. Such is the nature of a rural community.
But it occurred to me that Nokota's weird social gesture also stood for something else. In a curious way, the ineptness of the funeral bouquet dramatized the mindless persistence that only a corporation can sustain. Randolph's own energies, along with the combined energies of all his neighbors, were ultimately limited. In contrast, the energies of the corporation had no clear bottom. Maybe all the public relations activities of the company weren't really about making Nokota popular.
Maybe they were simply a way of saying, "We're here, we won't go away, get used to it". You can laugh at or hate a corporation, you can turn it into an object of contempt. You may experience it as a tenacious foe, you can get mad at it one day and ignore it the next. Nothing you may feel or do really matters, because in the end there is no getting around the fact that you are not fighting a normal opponent - your opponent is simply nobody. As Baron Thurlow said some three centuries ago,
Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
From the inside, the view is different. I've repeatedly been struck by the paradox that even the most destructive corporations are populated by friendly, caring people. Sure, there are exceptions to that - corrupt companies, companies with poisonous internal cultures, even companies that ought to be classified as instances of organized crime. But in general, far more harm is caused by corporations acting in ways that are utterly legal and that seem, from the perspective of those inside the corporation, to be perfectly appropriate. Quite obviously, if corporations do harm, it is not because the people inside them lack souls. Rather, it's because the company as a whole, like any organization, is a complex entity that acts according to its own autonomous set of motives and dynamics.
From Private Greed to Public Service
by Jay Hanson (October 06 2009)
with minor revisions on January 11 2010
This paper is the culmination of almost twenty years of study - working almost full time - to understand why our civilization is self-destructing. My brevity here is not due to my lack of understanding or scholarship.
Link to high resolution image: http://jayhanson.us/AmericaSchematic.html
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1776
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
-- James Madison, Federalist #57, 1787
The "bad news" is that "peak oil" marks the beginning of the end of capitalism and market politics because many decades of declining "net energy" {1} will result in many decades of declining economic activity. And since capitalism can't run backwards, a new method of distributing goods and services must be found. The "good news" is that our "price system" is fantastically inefficient! Americans could be wasting something like two billion tonnes (metric tons) of oil equivalent energy per year!!
In order to avoid anarchy, rebellion, civil war and global nuclear conflict, Americans must force a fundamental change in our political environment. We can keep the same political structures and people, but we must totally eliminate corporate-special interests from our political environment. A careful review of the progressive assault on laissez faire constitutionalism and neoclassical economics, from the 1880s through the 1930s, explains how this can be done legally and without violence. These early progressives showed how we can save our country. All that is lacking now is the political will. I call this adjustment of our political environment "America 2.0".
The reason that America 2.0 is so important and should be implemented as the first in a series of many political reforms is because it's "constitutional politics" (politics that changes politics). The modification that I am proposing would fundamentally alter the nature of politics in America.
To achieve America 2.0, we must first separate and isolate our political system from our economic system so that government can begin to actually address and solve societal problems rather than merely catering to corporate interests. The second step is to retire most working American citizens with an annuity sufficient for health and happiness, as government begins to eliminate the current enormous waste of vital resources by delivering goods and services directly. This would allow most adults to stay at home with their families but still receive the goods and services they need to enjoy life.
America 2.0 is based on the biological principle that organisms respond to environmental cues. If one changes an organism's environmental cues, then one also changes an organism's behavior. If the voting public and political decision-makers only receive cues designed to mitigate our crisis, then all choices they make will be aimed at mitigating that crisis. This is an extremely simple way to implement a science-based government.
After America 2.0 has been implemented, all the choices made by elected officials will be, by best calculations, "good" for the public. Officials will decide among a selection of public "goods". Corporations will become the public utilities that they were before 1860.
To the free man, the country is a collection of individuals who compose it ... He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
-- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
We may well call it 'the tragedy of the commons', using the word 'tragedy' as the philosopher Whitehead used it: 'The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.'
-- Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons (1968)
The criterion of "profit" has shaped our political decisions since the founding of our country, but now that we are facing peak oil, new "scientific systems" criteria must replace "profit" or our civilization will "collapse" {2} like so many others have throughout history.
In order for America to survive this crisis, a moderate, "doable" modification to our political environment is required. This paper does not attempt to describe a complete system to replace state-sponsored capitalism and market politics. My modest goal here is to show a way forward which could avoid the worst.
The Bad News
"Net Energy Cliff" Which Leads to The End of Capitalism
Our present "business-as-usual" model, which requires endless economic growth and endless job creation, is no longer physically possible. Here's why:
1. Business-as-usual depends upon jobs and markets to distribute goods and services.
2. Economic growth and increasing job availability require increasing net energy.
3. Net energy correlates with peak oil and both are expected to decrease for decades. See the "Net Hubbert Curve" in David Murphy's graph above and read footnote {3}.
4. Decades of decreasing net energy will cause job opportunities to decrease for decades because less and less energy will be available for economic development.
5. Globally, millions of new workers enter the job market each year, but job availability is expected to decline by millions of positions each year. Eventually, the projected high unemployment among young men will cause catastrophic political failures similar to those that led to Hitler's takeover of German democracy. Therefore, business-as-usual is no longer a viable method of distributing goods and services and a new method must be found - and soon!
Historians will say that "peak oil" marked the end of the second free trade episode. If we don't abandon capitalism now, we will be forced into another global war over resources:
By the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, world commodity prices were the central reality in the lives of millions of Continental peasants; the repercussions of the London money market were daily noted by businessmen all over the world; and governments discussed plans for the future in light of the situation on the world capital markets. Only a madman would have doubted that the international economic system was the axis of the material existence of the race. Because this system needed peace in order to function, the balance of power was made to serve it. Take this economic system away and the peace interest would disappear from politics ... By the end of the seventies the free trade episode (1846 to 1879) was at an end ... The origins of the cataclysm lay in the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system.
-- Karl Polanyi
The Good News: The Market is Fantastically Inefficient
Yes, that is correct: The "market system" is fantastically inefficient! {4} Our present way of distributing goods and services wastes enormous amounts of natural resources, but gigantic resource savings are possible. As an illustration, let's make a rough estimate of per capita food energy requirements and current waste:
If we wanted our government to distribute food directly instead of using the market, how much energy would be required to produce and deliver provisions to each and every American?
Adults need about 3,000 nutritional calories of food each day. Let's allow 30,000 calories to produce and another 3,000 calories to deliver food to every American. That's a total of 36,000 calories per day.
Just how much energy did the American "price system" actually consume? In 2006, Americans consumed an average of 231,008 calories per day, so 231,008 minus 36,000 equals 195,008 calories wasted each day. This simple calculation suggests that Americans could be wasting something like two billion tonnes of oil equivalent per year! {5} That's far more oil wasted than all the oil produced in the Middle East!
If we change a few of our founding beliefs and assumptions - and reorganize politically - more than enough energy remains to mitigate the worst.
Founded on Tragic Assumptions
The United States was founded on several assumptions. A key assumption, which led to several others, was that "the sum of individual interests" was equivalent to "the common interest". In practical terms, this meant:
1. Individuals know best how to solve their own problems.
2. Government should promote economic growth to create jobs so that individuals can solve their own problems.
3. The best way for government to promote economic growth is to ask business leaders what can be done to help them make more money. That's why today, lobbyists are absolutely necessary to the function of our government. Without lobbyists, our unqualified elected officials and their appointed cronies would have absolutely no idea what to do!
Today, we know that our founders were fundamentally wrong on this point. The lesson of "The Tragedy of the Commons" {6} is that "the sum of individual interests" is not "the common interest". In his classic, The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), Garrett Hardin illustrated why freedom in the commons brings ruin to all:
Visualize a pasture as a system that is open to everyone. The "carrying capacity" {7} of this pasture is ten animals. Ten herdsmen are each grazing one animal to fatten up for market. In other words, the ten animals are now consuming all the grass that the pasture can produce.
Harry (one of the herdsmen) will add one more animal to the pasture if he can make a profit. He subtracts the original cost of the new animal from the expected sales price of the fattened animal and then considers the cost of the food. Adding one more animal will mean less food for each of the present animals, but since Harry only has only one-tenth of the herd, he has to pay only one-tenth of the cost. Harry decides to exploit the commons and the other herdsmen, so he adds an animal and takes a profit.
Shrinking profit margins force the other herdsmen either to go out of business or continue the exploitation by adding more animals. This process of mutual exploitation continues until overgrazing and erosion destroy the pasture system, and all the herdsmen are driven out of business.
Most importantly, Hardin illustrates the critical flaw of freedom in the commons: all participants need to agree to conserve the commons, but any one can force the destruction of the commons. Although Hardin describes exploitation by humans in an unregulated public pasture, his commons and "grass" principle fit our entire society.
Private property is inextricably part of our commons because it is part of our life support and social systems. Owners alter the properties of our life support and social systems when they alter their land to "make a profit" - for example, when they cover land with corn or concrete.
Neighborhoods, cities and states are commons in the sense that no one is denied entry. Anyone may enter and lay claim to the common resources. One can compare profits to Hardin's "grass" when any number of corporations - from anywhere in the world - drive down profits by competing with local businesses for customers.
One can see wages as Hardin's "grass" when any number of workers - from anywhere in the world - can enter our community and drive down wages by competing with local workers for jobs. People themselves even become commons when they are exploited (are made the best use of) by other people and corporations. Everywhere one looks, one sees The Tragedy of the Commons. There is no technical solution to the problem of the commons, but governments can act to limit access to the commons, at which time they are no longer commons.
In the private-money based political system we have in America, everything (including people) becomes the commons because money is political power, and all political decisions are reduced to economic ones. In other words, we effectively have no political system, only an economic system - everything is for sale. Thus, America is presently one big commons that will be exploited until it is destroyed.
America 2.0: The Essence
I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Thomas Jefferson, along with James Madison worked assiduously to have an Eleventh Amendment included into our nation's original Bill of Rights. This proposed Amendment would have prohibited 'monopolies in commerce'. The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of 'serving the public good'. Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of 'artificial persons'. This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would not; and indeed could not possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations.
-- Dr Michael P Byron {8}
In order to prevent collapse on the downside of the net energy curve, Americans must force corporate-special interests completely out of our political environment. A careful review of the progressive assault on laissez faire constitutionalism and neoclassical economics, from the 1880s through the 1930s, explains how this can be done legally and without violence {9}. These early progressives showed how we can save our country. All that is lacking now is the political will. I call this adjustment of our political environment "America 2.0".
The modification that I am proposing could reduce natural resource consumption by something like ninety percent and greatly reduce, or possibly eliminate, civil violence caused by the inevitable post-peak-oil-economic collapse.
Our present method of distributing goods and services works something like this:
* Our government loans money to banks, so bankers can operate businesses (which require buildings, computers, furniture, lights, air conditioning, employees, commuting, et cetera).
* The bankers then lend money to other businesses, like restaurants, real estate developers, et cetera (which also require buildings, computers, commuters, advertising, accountants, et cetera).
* So the employees of these restaurants, real estate developers, et cetera. can buy a car and drive to the store (with even more buildings, computers, commuters, et cetera).
* Just to buy a loaf of bread!
The "price system" has to be the most inefficient organization possible!
Why not simply have government pay someone to pick up that loaf of bread at the bakery and deliver it to the consumer? This is a form of distribution that would eliminate the banks, most of the other businesses, and all the stores. Most Americans would no longer need a car to commute to work or run to the store! However, some private businesses that provide critical services would still be operated but at our government's direction.
We could use the same efficient method of distribution for everything that Americans really "need". Shoppers would order provisions online, in the same way that Amazon or Netflix works now, and then their orders would be delivered the next day. And a medical care caravan could regularly drive through neighborhoods, filling teeth, giving checkups, and so on.
But first we must separate and isolate our political system from our economic system so that government can begin to actually address and solve societal problems rather than merely catering to corporate interests. The second step is to retire most working American citizens with an annuity sufficient for health and happiness, {10} as government begins to eliminate the current enormous waste of vital resources by delivering goods and services directly. This would allow most adults to stay at home with their families but still receive the goods and services they need to enjoy life.
Unless something is done now to prevent it, America will face anarchy, rebellion, and civil war on the downside of the net energy cliff. In order to maintain public order, the state must do one thing: take corporate-special interests totally out of politics. {11}
The urgency, necessity, and practicality of this proposal should be apparent to all sectors of society if they could be brought to understand how our social systems are depleting our physical systems. I am convinced that if Americans were given the honest science and engineering behind what needs to be done, the vast majority would willingly make a peaceful transition to a "sustainable retreat".
Besides wanting to sell their ephemeral products and services to an unsuspecting public, corporate-special interests also want to prevent the state from solving social pathologies because they can profit from treating the symptoms. These special interests can do no better because they are machines programmed to create profits! {12}
All corporate-special interests - even universities, charities, and churches - depend on perpetual economic growth for their budgets, but the laws of thermodynamics tell us that perpetual economic growth is physically impossible. Therefore, all corporate-special interests must be removed from the political environment.
The first simple step is to remove the "personhood" Constitutional protections from corporations, which could probably be done by the President acting alone, via his "police powers". Certainly it could be done by the Supreme Court or Congress if they had the political will to do so. Once corporations are firmly under democratic control - in essence, "public utilities" - the federal government can begin correcting the abuses of capitalism as gracefully as possible. We want to preserve and include the great achievements of capitalism while removing its pathologies.
What follows are six political steps, listed in order of priority, that are designed to mitigate the societal disruptions of the net energy cliff:
1. Remove the "personhood" Constitutional protections from corporations.
2. Make it a federal crime for corporations to advocate anything (including, but not limited to, advertising) in the mass media.
3. Make it a federal crime for anyone employed by a corporation to lobby elected or appointed officials directly or indirectly.
4. Mandate public financing for elections.
5. Assemble teams of the country's best and brightest medical doctors, scientists, engineers and other thinkers - but no representatives of religious groups, economists, or other corporate-special interests - to recommend public policy. (We do not need a Manhattan Project for economics - on how to save the corporations and their outrageous profits; we need a Manhattan Project on how the country can survive the net energy cliff!)
6. Encourage public debate on proposed changes.
(Number 5 above is the key difference that I am advocating. Public policy recommendations would come from medical doctors, engineers and scientists who are looking at the entire system instead of from a room full of fat salesman trying to sell worthless shit to an unsuspecting public. It's based on the recognition that if one changes the environment in which political decisions are made, one changes the political decisions.)
National Goal
The "goal" of our society should be to make our citizens healthy and happy while using as few natural resources as possible (especially energy). The methods needed to attain this goal can be determined by teams of medical doctors, scientists and engineers. Capitalism should be dismantled as gracefully as possible and any natural resources that are not required health and happiness, should left to nature.
With modern technology, probably less than five percent of the population could produce all the goods we really "need". A certain number of qualified "producers" could be selected by a peer group to produce for five years. The rest can stay home and sleep, sing, dance, paint, read, write, pray, play, do minor repairs, work in the garden, and practice birth control.
Any number of alternative cultural, ethnic or religious communities could be established by popular vote. Religious communities could have public prayer in their schools, prohibit booze, allow no television to corrupt their kids, wear uniforms, whatever. Hippies could establish communities where free sex was the norm. Writers or painters could establish communities where bad taste would be against the law. Ethnic communities could be established to preserve language and customs. If residents didn't like the rules in a particular community, they could move to another religious, cultural, or ethnic community of their choosing.
In short, the one big freedom that individuals would have to give up would be the freedom to destroy the commons (in its broadest sense). Couples would be allowed only one child. And in return, they would be given a guaranteed income for life and the freedom to live almost any way they choose.
"Mob in the Square in Romania" Which Led to the End of Communism http://jayhanson.us/America_mob.gif
The changes I am proposing can be accomplished without rewriting our Constitution or violence. The two quotes at the end suggest tactics that worked for the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements. Sign-carrying activists should fill the streets of DC, "like the mob in the square in Romania" {13}, until the city is gridlocked. Activists should just stay there until the powers-that-be concede.
I expect that organizing this movement will take a few years. It's asking a lot. It can't happen overnight. We know that with "cliffing" net energy, our society is just going to keep getting worse and worse until something big changes.
Let's hope the "big change" is something "progressive" instead of a new "President For Life", who has a "prayer breakfast" every morning where he makes up lists of "evildoers" that are to be rounded up and shot. (That's still my most-likely scenario. We came close with "W".)
No progress is possible until we can get the corporate-special interests - all of them - out of our politics and out of the mass media! - Jay - http://jayhanson.us http://www.dieoff.com
You don't communicate with anyone purely on the rational facts or ethics of an issue ... It is only when the other party is concerned or feels threatened that he will listen - in the arena of action, a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication ... No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation ... To attempt to operate on a good-will basis rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something that the world has not yet experienced.
-- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (1971)
The big corporations, our clients, are scared shitless of the environmental movement. They sense that there's a majority out there and that the emotions are all on the other side - if they can be heard. They think the politicians are going to yield to the emotions. I think the corporations are wrong about that. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail.
-- William Greider, Who Will Tell The People (1993)
'Capitalism' is a money-based political system which creates dissatisfaction, while converting natural resources into garbage, in exchange for IOUs, which will be worthless when the oil peaks and the country goes up in flames.
-- Jay Hanson
{1} Life on Earth is "political" http://jayhanson.us/p1.html and conforms to universal thermodynamic laws. We mine our minerals and fossil fuels from the Earth's crust. The deeper we dig, the greater the minimum energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible fuels and minerals are mined first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to mine and refine poorer and poorer quality resources. New technologies can, on a short-term basis, decrease energy costs, but neither technology nor "prices" can repeal the laws of thermodynamics:
* The hematite ore of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota contained sixty percent iron. But now it is depleted and society must use lower-quality taconite ore that has an iron content of about 25 percent.
* The average energy content of a pound of coal dug in the US has dropped fourteen percent since 1955.
* In the 1930s, a barrel of oil invested in finding, drilling and pumping could yield about one hundred barrels. By the 1970s, that number had dropped to about twenty-five barrels. Within a couple of years, that number will become one for one. At that point, even if the price of oil reaches $500 a barrel, it wouldn't be logical to look for new oil in the US because it would consume more energy than it would recover. Decreasing net energy sets up a positive feedback loop: since oil is used directly or indirectly in everything, as the energy costs of oil increase, the energy costs of everything else increase too - including other forms of energy. For example, oil provides about fifty percent of the fuel used in coal extraction.
Every day, about 85 million barrels of oil are burnt: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption . Every day, less oil exists on planet Earth than the day before. The handwriting is on the wall: "capitalism" is running out of energy! Here is a small, silent animation which will illustrate the "net energy" principle: http://jayhanson.us/oil.html .
Imagine having a motor scooter with a five-gallon tank, but the nearest gas station is six gallons away. You cannot fill your tank with trips to the gas station because you burn more than you can bring back - it's impossible for you to cover your overhead (the size of your bankroll and the price of the gas are irrelevant). You might as well put your scooter up on blocks because you are "out of gas" - forever. It's the same with the American economy: if we must spend more than one unit of energy to produce enough goods and services to buy one unit of energy, it will be impossible for us to cover our overhead. At that point, America's economic machine is "out of gas" - forever. More on energy basics at http://dieoff.org/page175.htm .
{2} http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
{3} David Murphy's graph is an "educated guess" to illustrate the point that net energy falls faster than gross energy. Precision here is impossible because the data is not available. His Oil Drum piece can be found at http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/5500 .
{4} Although economists claim the market is "efficient", they actually mean "efficient allocation" of money - not the "efficient use" of materials. "Economic efficiency" is completely different than "materials efficiency".
{5} Here is an oversimplified example to give us an idea of how incredibly inefficient the "price system" really is. Suppose that the only thing Americans had to do was to eat. How much energy would be required to feed them?
In 2006, Americans consumed about 334,600,000 Btu per capita, per year: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1c.xls . This converts to about 84,317,785 nutritional calories equivalent per year: http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm or 84,317,785 / 365 = 231,008 calories per day. But adults only require something like 3,000 calories of food energy per day to survive, so it seems we, very roughly, waste something like 231,008 - 3,000 = 228,008 calories per day, per capita.
Studies show that food grains produced with modern, high-yield methods (including packaging and delivery) now contain between four and ten calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of solar energy. So we will allow ten calories of energy to grow and process each calorie of food delivered, so 3,000 * 10 = 30,000 calories per day is required to keep an adult alive. Thus, 228,008 - 30,000 = approximately 198,008 calories are still being wasted each and every day, by every American.
Let's allow the equivalent of 3,000 nutritional calories (about one tenth gallon of gas) per day, per capita to collect and deliver food and water to each and every household in the country, so 198,008 - 3,000 = 195,008 calories equivalent wasted per day, per capita in the US.
The estimated population of America on September 22 2009 was 307,511,668: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html . So 195,008 *307,511,668 * 365 = 21,887,999,529,837,200 nutritional calories wasted every year in the US, or 2,188,799,953 tonnes - over two billion tonnes - of oil equivalent are wasted each year in the US feeding people! In 2006, oil production in the Middle East was only 1,221,900,000 tonnes: http://tinyurl.com/mfwndm .
Every year, the "price system" in the United States, wastes almost a billion tonnes more oil than is produced in the Middle East! Obviously, there is more to life than eating, but equally-obviously, the price system is the most inefficient organization in human history!
Excel spreadsheet: http://jayhanson.us/America.xls
High resolution image: http://jayhanson.us/America_xls.htm
{6} http://tinyurl.com/ycg7wss
{7} An environment's "carrying capacity" is its maximum persistently supportable load (Catton 1986). If the load exceeds capacity, then the environment is damaged and carrying capacity is reduced. http://dieoff.org/page74.htm
{8} http://tinyurl.com/c28c87
Ted Nace, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of America (2003, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/Gangs-America-Corporate-Disabling-Democracy/dp/1576753190
Differences Between the Classic Corporation (Before 1860) and the Modern Corporation (After 1900):
< 1860: Difficult: requires a custom charter issued by a state legislature
> 1900: Easy: general incorporation charter allows automatic chartering
Life Span
< 1860: Limited term
> 1900: No limits
"Shape Shifting"
< 1860: Corporations not allowed to own stock in other companies; restricted to activities specified in charter
> 1900: Corporations free to pursue acquisitions and spin-offs;
< 1860: Usually restricted to home state
> 1900: No restrictions
< 1860: Restricted to activities specified in charter
> 1900: Allowed to pursue multiple specified lines of business and initiate or acquire new ones at company's discretion
< 1860: Actions constrained by shareholder liability and by threat of charter revocation
> 1900: Fewer constraints due to limited liability, disuse of charter revocation, and tort reforms
< 1860: Managerial action hampered by legal status of minority shareholders and of corporate agents
> 1900: Legal revisions enable consolidation of management's power
< 1860: Limited by charter restrictions
> 1900: Asset limits removed; antitrust laws generally not effective
Constitutional Rights
< 1860: Functional only
> 1900: Steady acquisition of constitutional rights
Here are some organizations, books, and web resources that share the same goal - ending corporate governance: http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ReadingLinks.html
This timeline of corporate personhood (the gain and loss of rights and powers) is particularly interesting: http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ToPRaP.html
{9} The "Progressives" are still making constitutional changes. See Cass Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution - And Why We Need It More Than Ever (2006) http://www.amazon.com/Second-Bill-Rights-Unfinished-Revolution dp/0465083331 .
* In 1900, it was clear that the Constitution permitted racial segregation. By 1970, it was universally agreed that racial segregation was forbidden.
* In 1960, the Constitution permitted sex discrimination. By 1990, it was clear that sex discrimination was almost always forbidden.
* In 1930, the Constitution allowed government to suppress political dissent if it had a bad or dangerous tendency. By 1970, it was clear that the government could almost never suppress political dissent.
* In 1910, the Constitution prohibited maximum hour and minimum wage laws. By 1940, it was clear that the Constitution permitted maximum hour and minimum wage laws.
* In 1960, it was clear that the Constitution allowed government to regulate commercial speech, which was not protected by the free speech principle. By 2000, it was clear that the Constitution generally did not allow government to regulate commercial speech unless it was false or misleading.
* In 1970, it would have been preposterous to argue that the Constitution protected the right to engage in homosexual sodomy. In 1987, it was well settled that the Constitution did not protect that right. By 2004, it was clear that the Constitution did protect the right to engage in homosexual sodomy. More in http://jayhanson.us/fortyAcresAndAMule.pdf
Barbra H Fried, The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement (Harvard University Press,1998)
Edward N Kearny, Thurman Arnold, Social Critic: The Satirical Challenge to Orthodoxy http://jayhanson.us/thurmanArnoldSocialCritic.pdf
Thurman W Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism (Yale University Press 1937), Chapter VIII: The Personification of Corporation
Robert H Nelson, Reaching or Heaven on Earth: The Theological Meaning of Economics (1991)
{10} Human health and happiness are the products of our biology and environment.
{11} In order to understand why people act as they do, at a minimum, one must understand "politics" among social animals. See http://jayhanson.us/p1.html
{12} http://jayhanson.us/c1.html
{13} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution_of_1989
This paper is hereby placed in the public domain and may be reprinted without further permission.
This paper is the culmination of almost twenty years of study - working almost full time - to understand why our civilization is self-destructing. My brevity here is not due to my lack of understanding or scholarship.
Jay Hanson (October 06 2009)
This file is archived at http://jayhanson.us/america.htm
A "no flash" version designed to copy and paste into an email is at http://jayhanson.us/americaNF.htm
A "no graphics" version is at http://jayhanson.us/americaNG.htm
A pdf version is at http://jayhanson.us/america.pdf
A word version is at http://jayhanson.us/america.doc


text:
American composer Aaron Copland began work on Quiet City in 1939 and completed it two years later. A lonely trumpet and an English horn, backed by hushed strings, offer an ode to New York.
The orchestral version of Quiet City is fairly well known, but there's more to this story. Another version has recently come to light.
Quiet City was music that Aaron Copland wrote for playwright Irwin Shaw. Shaw's play of the same name was a flop that never made it out of previews — and Copland's original score for trumpet, saxophone, clarinets and piano was never published. But composer and saxophonist Christopher Brellochs recently unearthed the manuscript and recorded the world premiere of Quiet City in its original form.
This first version will be performed by Brellochs at Copland House at Merestead in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. this Sunday afternoon. Brellochs says that he didn't know that this smaller-scored version even existed before he uncovered it.
"It was an experience kind of like finding the Holy Grail, to find unpublished music by one of America's iconic concert composers," Brellochs says.
"It happened during my doctoral studies at Rutgers University," he continues. After going back and forth discussing all kinds of dissertation topics, he recalls, "My advisor at the time, Paul Cohen, said, 'I happen to have a copy of this that I got from a friend at the Library of Congress,' where it had been collecting dust for over 70 years. And I immediately jumped at the proposition."
The play was billed as a "realistic fantasy" or an "experimental drama," Brelloch says, with a central character who has renounced his dreams — and the ramifications of that decision — when he begins to lose his mind.
"There's a very poignant scene when he's in Central Park," Brellochs explains. "It's nighttime, and he starts hearing a trumpet playing. The trumpet is the instrument his brother played, and so it has certain meanings within the play. He asks someone passing by, 'Did you hear that trumpet?'" The stranger didn't, nor does a policeman the main character asks as well. "He's really suffering the consequences of not being true to himself," Brelloch says.
Yet as interesting and affecting as this play sounds, it didn't even get out of previews. There were a couple of readings, and then the production was cancelled. As Copland wrote to his friend and fellow composer Virgil Thomson, "My career in the theater has been a flop."
However, Copland managed to reuse the music. Brellochs calls the Quiet City score "a goldmine of wonderful themes and melodies," some of which found their way into the orchestral version of Quiet City, while a delightful waltz went into the score for the film Our Town.
But some of the music has not been available to the general public until now, in Brellochs' new concert version, of which one reviewer said: "Themes that sound grand and romantic over the swell of the strings take on a lonelier, more melancholy quality."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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text:
A top U.S. health official on Thursday pledged to try to ban menthol from regular cigarettes, outlaw flavors in all cigars, and tighten rules regarding the sale of most flavored versions of electronic cigarettes.
The move represents a major step to further push down U.S. smoking rates, which have been falling for decades.
The restrictions are mainly aimed at reducing smoking in kids: About half of teens who smoke cigarettes choose menthols and flavored e-cigarettes have been blamed for a recent increase in teen vaping rates.
"I will not allow a generation of children to become addicted to nicotine through e-cigarettes," Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said in a statement.
Health advocates say a menthol ban would have greater impact on the health of Americans, but it would likely take years to put in place. The changes for e-cigarettes could kick in within a few months.
Battery-powered e-cigarettes are more popular among teens than regular smokes and are considered safer. But many versions contain potentially addictive nicotine, and health officials believe they set kids who try them on a path toward regular cigarettes.
Gottlieb called for measures to prevent the marketing of e-cigarettes directly to kids and ensure there are added safeguards preventing online sales of e-cigarettes to minors. He also proposed beefing up measures so that convenience stores and some other retailers don't sell e-cigarettes in kid-friendly flavors like cherry and vanilla. They could still be sold in vape shops or other businesses who don't admit minors.
Smoking is the nation's leading cause of preventable illness, causing more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States. The FDA currently bans sales of e-cigarettes and tobacco products to those under 18.
In 2009, the government banned a number of kid-friendly flavorings in cigarettes. But after an aggressive lobbying effort by tobacco companies, menthol was exempted.
Gottlieb's proposal for e-cigarette flavorings also exempts menthol. He said menthol e-cigarettes may be an option for adults who turn to vaping products to quit regular cigarettes and he decided not to push for an end to menthol flavoring in vaping products.
Smoking has been declining for more than five decades. Some 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked in the early 1960s. Last year, it was down to 14 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts credit anti-smoking campaigns, cigarette taxes and smoking bans for most of the decline in the adult rate. But some say adult smokers switching to e-cigarettes have also helped drive down the rate in recent years.
The cigarette smoking rate is even lower among high school students — about 9 percent, according to the latest figures.
But e-cigarette use jumped 78 percent this year in high school kids and 48 percent among middle school kids, Gottlieb said, citing new survey data.
The FDA has been taken earlier steps to investigate the marketing of e-cigarettes by a number of companies, including the market leader, Juul Labs Inc. of a San Francisco. Getting out ahead of today's FDA announcement, Juul on Tuesday stopped filling store orders for mango, fruit, creme and cucumber pods and will resume sales only to retailers that scan IDs and take other steps to verify a buyer is at least 21. The company said Juul will continue to sell menthol and mint at stores, and sell all flavors through its website.
The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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