happiness in the midst of collapse - something to smile about

When viewed from outer space, one might say that the main objective of the human race since the Industrial Revolution has been to develop. "Development" is a sacred word to your local town hall, the sounding floor of the UN, and micro-financiers from Ghana to Sri Lanka.

And we've been very good developers. We've built everything to make us go faster, longer, and stronger, from malls to missiles to microchips. The standard of living of the average person in the US has increased to include all the standard comforts that may have been afforded by your typical feudal lord from England or Japan. Yet, if you take a more nuanced view of humans, and actually ask one of us, "What is the goal of your life?" The answer you usually get is something that boils down to "I just want happiness."

Do our developments lead to happiness?

In an insightful New York Times column, Daniel Gilbert says that happiness levels in the US have decreased since the before the global economic collapse that we've been experiencing for the past eight months. But he makes the important distinction that human happiness is not really in flux according to increased or decreased wealth. The real reason that the economic collapse has impacted happiness has more to to with uncertainty. He writes:

But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. After all, most of us still have more inflation-adjusted dollars than our grandparents had, and they didn’t live in an unremitting funk. Middle-class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier, and the fin de siècle was not an especially gloomy time. Clearly, people can be perfectly happy with less than we had last year and less than we have now.

So if a dearth of dollars isn’t making us miserable, then what is? No one knows. I don’t mean that no one knows the answer to this question. I mean that the answer to this question is that no one knows — and not knowing is making us sick.

So it is actually financial uncertainty, not the decrease in our bank accounts that is making us unhappy. Gilbert concludes:

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.

Happiness has nothing to do with the fact that the average American is less able to engage in highly consumptive activities like going to Disneyland or stuffing their closets with unneeded fashion and accessories.

So why has our global society spent the last 150 years seeking more and more stuff, leisure, and comfort, like we're on some crazy global joy ride? Not to make us happier, that's for sure. We can be perfectly happy without a bull market, a trust fund, or land holdings. And for most of us, who aren't among the rich and famous, that's something to smile about.

An agreement that isn't good for anyone: The Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

People and planet should come before profits, but the proposed Panama trade plan would mean greed rules. The Senate Finance committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Top trade negotiator Ron Kirk is trying to ram through this agreement by July 1, when the Panamanian head of state Martin Torrijos leaves office. But this is just another free trade agreement that is bad for the people of Panama, it’s bad for the planet, and it’s no good for people of the US. We should call upon Congress to stop it now.

There’s a rancher that I know who raises cattle in the San Blas mountains of Panama, who I’ll only call Uncle Rickie. I met Uncle Rickie when I traveled to Panama in November of 2008, and I remember him for being a jolly fellow with a big belly who proudly bounced his new granddaughter Antonia, his first grandchild, on his knee.

If the Panama agreement went forward, Uncle Rickie would have to contend with a host of difficulties. The first would be that US cattle ranchers, who enjoy hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government (US livestock farmers got handouts of about $344 million in 2003, for example,) would suddenly be able to sell duty-free to Panamanians. At the same time, Uncle Rickie will have to compete with a dramatic influx of cheap pork products from the US. Pro-pork lobbyists think that increased sales to Panama will result in $20.6 million in increased revenue. Uncle Rickie will have a lot of trouble making a profit by selling his beef to the Panamanian market, and eventually he may have to sell his land.

Farmers should be allowed to sell to their local markets. Local, living economies are good for everyone. If officials pass the harmful agreement, farmers like Uncle Rickie will no longer be able to carry on farming. Who would be there to buy the land of farmers who are forced to sell? Companies from the US and other rich nations, and maybe some wealthy Panamanians who support this agreement. This leads to a consolidation of power and decision-making as fewer people own more and more of planet earth. But people have a right to self-determination and autonomy, and the Panamanian government should respect that right.

Another supporter of the Panama agreement is Caterpillar, maker of heavy machinery used for logging and constructions. They are frothing at the mouth thinking of all the Panamanian trees that they can cut down and the increased heavy machinery sales that will result.

By the time little Antonia is going on her first date, the forests of Panama will probably be decimated, the clean rivers and pristine stands of old growth trees a distant memory. Verdant ecosystems will be forever ruined for incredible species like the blue morpho butterfly, which I first saw shining iridescently as it soared through the rainforest in the Boquete region of Panama. Like all of us, Antonia has a right to intact ecosystems, which Caterpillar seeks to undermine through supporting this trade agreement.

Another group who will be thrown under the bus if this agreement passed would be the Kuna Indians, a Panamanian ethnic group who have preserved their cultural heritage. Traditional farmers and artisans, these indigenous peoples will also face steep competition and many may have to abandon the ecologically sustainable, culturally rich ways of life their ancestors have known for thousands of years.

Will Antonia benefit from a more productive national economy? Probably not. Even looking at the brute economic indicator of gross domestic product, this trade agreement does not promise positive effects.

A similar trade agreement offers foreshadowing of what could happen if the Panama agreement goes through. NAFTA, a 1994 trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, has shown that increased unprotected trade with the US is not likely to promote self-government, support local, living economies, or benefit most people at all.

GDP growth has been unequal after NAFTA, with Canada growing an average of 3.6 percent per year, the US growing 3.3 percent and Mexico growing only 2.7 percent. The average Mexican did not benefit from this growth, as income inequality has risen. Wages of Mexican workers decreased by 18 percent in the first five years. The predominant occupation in Mexico prior to NAFTA was farming, but many farmers, mostly in Central Mexico, were forced to sell or abandon their land after subsidized corn from the US flooded into Mexican markets, leaving the Mexican farmer unable to compete. Corn is indigenous to Mexico, and was farmed mostly sustainably. But now what is left is forced to compete in an atmosphere of industrial agriculture.

After NAFTA, Mexico has maintained a trade deficit with the US, meaning they import more than they export. This leaves the country hemorrhaging money and exports, which isn’t good for anyone in Mexico.

Furthermore, trade agreements like this one are bad for US workers, as we lose jobs here in the US. In just the first seven years, NAFTA had caused the loss of 766,030 jobs in the US. And it will cost us tax dollars, too. By 2002, the US Department of Labor had qualified 408,000 workers extensions on their unemployment benefits because their jobs had moved to Mexico.

Trade between the US and Panama totaled $2.1 billion in 2002. US exports account for about $1.8 billion of that amount. This means that for every $10 worth of goods that the US sells to Panama, Panama sells only $1 worth of goods to the US. The exports Panama sells to the US account for a tiny fraction, only 1.4 percent, of its GDP of $21 billion. Yet it is willing to sell its people down the river for this pittance.

The farmers who’ll be forced to sell their land and migrate may be forced to relocate to the city of Colon, where there are jobs in the Colon Free Trade Zone, or Zono Libre. When you picture a free trade zone, picture “Pleasure Island” from the Disney cartoon Pinocchio. For rich companies, a free trade zone represents a lawless area free from tariffs, taxes, or pesky labor or environmental laws. It usually looks like a collection of warehouse-like buildings on the edge of a port city that is protected by barbed wire. Working people (such as ex-farmers) travel into these zones each morning to do the most tedious grunt labor in return for low wages. Corporations like the low wages, while the workers are usually just desperate for any work they can get. Ships pull up to the buildings, unload raw materials like T-shirt fabric or radio parts, workers assemble them, and the finished goods get shipped to rich countries where people can afford them.

In his 2008 State of the Union address, Bush asked Congress to approve the Panama trade agreement, gleefully exclaiming that the agreement “will support good jobs for the finest workers in the world: those whose products say ‘Made in the USA.’” That sentiment is perplexing to anyone familiar to Zono Libre, where low-paid workers work in unsafe work conditions to sew together textiles bound for the US valued at $400 million per year for companies like Orotex, with offices in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Textiles and clothing account for about 24 percent of the work done in Zono Libre. This happens as US workers lose more and more textiles jobs (stat), yet purchase more and more clothing (stat).

For all the celebrated freedom that free trade measures like the Colon Free Trade Zone has received, you would think that Panamanians would be better off, however the average Panamanian is not better off. Income inequality has risen, placing Panama among some of the most unequal countries in Latin America. Panama’s index for income inequality is 60, according to a World Bank report. As the report says, “[Inequality] is more obvious in urban areas like Colon, where the close, physical juxtaposition of the modern, dynamic wealthy sector with poor city slums accentuates the perceived gap between rich and poor.”

I have never seen Colon since my Panamanian friends have insisted that if I were to travel there I would become a certain victim of a mugging or kidnapping. But the real Panamanian danger isn’t really frustrated urban poor who see wealth all around them but can’t touch it. The real danger is the Panama trade agreement.

Some are arguing that this trade agreement is needed to rescue the US economy. But Panama’s entire economy is 0.15 percent the size of the US economy. The US has one hundred times more people than Panama. That’s right, I’m saying the country is tiny. For US officials to undermine people’s basic rights in order to do business with this small country in the hopes that its tiny economy will deliver us from certain economic death is a mistake.

If passed, this agreement will harm Panamanians like Uncle Rickie. It will negatively impact little Antonia and make her economic future less certain. It will not benefit the average Panamanian but is likely to lead to a decrease in self-government and a spike in income inequality, as NAFTA did. And it will not benefit people in the US. Our Congress should vote an emphatic “no” on the Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. 

The Financial Times on the Future of Capitalism?

A fascinating series in the Financial Times has been exploring the future of capitalism. What's groundbreaking is that it has been giving voice to economic earth-shakers like Richard Layard, who says that we need a fundamental shift away from competitive capitalist values. In a March 11, 2009 FT article, Layard writes: 

[W]e should stop the worship of money and create a more humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion...  [W]e need a trend away from excessive individualism and towards greater social responsibility. Is it possible to reverse a cultural trend in this way? It has happened before, in the early 19th century. For the next 150 years there was a growth of social responsibility, followed by a decline in the next 50. So a trend can change and it is often in bad times (such as the 1930s in Scandinavia) that people decide to seek a more co-operative lifestyle. 

From a news industry standpoint, if the Financial Times is willing to give voice to those who are openly opposing some of the key tenets of our economic system, it is time for all progressive communicators who call for a better way forward in this time of economic crisis to start questioning even more deeply. We have a lot of communications work to do if we are going to begin to shift societal values toward a more ethical value system and away from the values of greed. But if the Financial Times is willing to do it, so must we.

A story that needs to be told: The Story of Stuff

The New York Times finally wrote up "The Story of Stuff," a fantastic video detailing our why we all need to consume less. The video was orchestrated by Annie Leonard, an activist and thought leader in the progressive movement. In twenty minutes, the video takes us through the entire production-consumption process, pointing out the ways in which it is ruining the planet, exploiting low-income countries and communities, and making all of us "consumers" less happy.

"It's a system in crisis," says Leonard in the video. "You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."

The New York Times reports:

The video certainly makes the facts stark and at times very political: “We’ll start with extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet,” she says at one point. “What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.”

I first heard about this video a year ago when a dear friend, who is as passionate and granola-crunching as environmentalists get, sat me down with her dial-up modem and insisted I watch this online video, which had taken her four hours to download. I knew that if this online video had reached my tech-hating friend, who is just barely on e-mail and has sworn off cell phones, it had really gone viral. This put a big smile on my face, because "The Story of Stuff" is a story that very much needs to told. I'm glad that the New York Times finally agrees.

Coming in fourth place in Survive DC

Over the weekend I participated in a fantastic event called Survive DC, a giant city-wide game emulating how one would have to behave in case the city was infiltrated by zombies. 

The event involved running (or taking public transit) to six checkpoints throughout the city, performing various tasks at the checkpoints such as singing campfire songs, drawing a picture with crayons of "What I want to be when I grow up") (I drew a social butterfly, which is kind of like a media relations activist), and touching the Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendage. 

In between the checkpoints, you had to run really, really fast from the "chasers," people who could tag you, thereby eliminating you from being a "runner." If you were a running player who got tagged, you became a chaser.

My most memorable experience of being chased was when there were three chasers behind me. In order to avoid my fun being killed, I had to vault a fence (after which I skidded to a halt on the pavement, creating an unsightly gash on my elbow), and then dashing across the street just in front of an ambulance with its sirens on. I ducked into a corner liquor store at the end of the next block, with blood gushing from my arm, which seemed a bit frightening to the owner and customers. When the ambulance cleared, the chasers were gone and I made my get-away.

Organizers say that there were about 600 participants. I came in fourth place, behind a team of three Marines who were doing the race together. What can I say? When you have a herd of zombies behind you, you run really fast.

Raising the Voices of Immigrant Rights and Global Justice

On Mayday I marched to the White House to rally for immigrant rights. I had learned of the protest several months before through David Thurston of Casa de Maryland. When I walked up to the park where the first rally had been planned, David, the consummate organizer, juggling multiple tasks, handed me a clipboard and asked, "Can you do press sign-in?" But of course I could do press sign-in! 

I was there because I care deeply about creating a more people-centered, sustainable global economy. The global justice movement is the immigrant rights movement. We call for an end to unfair neoliberal and hyper-capitalist policies that force people to migrate in the first place. These policies, imposed by institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, take food right off of the tables of working families in poor countries, impose harmful free trade policies, property taxes, and other unfair laws. Once these policies are in place, people often have no recourse than to leave the rural homestead to look for a job in the city. (Spurring rural-to-urban migration has been part of a popular development strategy, as engineered by those in power, even though it is incredibly harmful, disruptive, and an entirely wrong-headed long-term strategy.) If the city's economy isn't big enough to accommodate all of these job-seekers, they start looking to other countries.

No matter where people migrate, everyone has a right to their basic needs - food, clothing, shelter, and autonomy. In my view, the best solution is for people to have the freedom to stay in their hometown and not have to migrate in the first place.

For the rest of the day I assisted the organizers by doing what I love to do: Expand the impact of the day's events by getting the voices of people doing great work into newspapers, magazines, radio and online media, and getting their faces in front of the hefty cameras of network news. Changing the world starts with just raising your voice.