Road Map to Capitalism

If nature were a business, it would gross $33 Trillion dollars in profits every year.

I wanted to start this reflection by making a comment on the picture to the left. There really was a Biosphere 2? I thought that was only a movie by Paulie Shore! Well I'll be darned.

So this is a pretty good article if you love reading about statistics all day. The overall tone is pretty optimistic and a rare case that I don't feel like crying myself to sleep after reading. I just think that Lovins et al draw too much their percentage change of this and that. They are throwing around numbers way too much, and I'm sure that if most of these were checked out, they would not add up.

That said, I admire them for going through the whole process of calculating these amounts, because there is no doubt in anyone's mind that reducing paper consumption will save trees, and blah blah blah. Actually, when I was helping my uncle lay the pipes in his chalet, he made sure we used as many straight lines of copper pipes as possible because he said it caused less resistance. So I was pretty happy to know this already once I read it in the text.

The ideas of adopting innovative technologies are novel ones. We must really stop thinking about what is easy and start thinking about what is right for the environment. I loved the statistic that said that only 1% of all product inputs come out as actual products. So much of what we make is wasted every single day.

One last comment I want to make is about this movement to replicate nature: biomimicry. It makes so much sense because you always hear of animals and plants doing things so unimaginable that you wonder how it's done. Everyone has heard that spider webs are some of the strongest material on the earth. And this summer, I saw a spider eat its own web probably recycling it to make another at a later time. I just wanted to say that nature was so cool and that we should do our best to keep it healthy

Global Economy and the Third World

This is one of the best articles so far this year albeit having a negative tone. I like that Khor made us realize that, yes most third world countries were not well off before colonization and globalization, but at least they were self sufficient. Through indigenous techniques, they were able to keep themselves and most of the community fed. With globalization, companies brought in harsh working conditions, dangerous chemicals which come into contact with those people, and strip their land of resources.

Khor is the president of the Third World Network, in which he is the leading voice behind the opposition of the current pattern of globalization. I TOTALLY agree with that!!! There is a definite need to globalize and modernize the planet, but the way we are going about it for the most part is totally wrong. Khor seems to have the right idea here.

Back to my previous point. Khor points out that so much harm has been inflicted upon third world countries by cash hungry corporations such as the Bhopal disaster in India where so many died. And these companies pinned communities against each other to compete in agricultural production. The ones that didn't use expensive fertilizers had to bite the dust. All the companies care about is to tear the land clean of resources.

A perfect example is fishing boats having to go out further and further into the sea to catch fish because of so much overfishing. People in the third world won't have access to fish supply because they don't have boats that can go out to sea.

There are so many examples of misuse of resources or mistreatment of people, and Khor outlines these methods. What he is calling for is a new methodology. We cannot repeat the same things we did in the past and expect different results. That will never happen.

He has a nice call to action in the end. Not only does he want us to stop tearing at the earth for luxury resources, he also says to stop undertaking massive projects like the Three Gorges Dam or nuclear power plants

Stiglitz: Globalism's Discontent.

Here is another perfect Social Context paper: the negative side of a potentially good thing. We have been seeing this side for a long time now. Are we being manipulated into becoming anti capitalist, anti modernization, anti greed, anti globalization people? Well whatever the answer is, I feel like that a little bit. I understand why globalization might have its negative sides, but talk about its good aspects please. ..................................................................................... That's Stiglitz right there --->

If China never globalized, how would the Olympics ever had made their way to Beijing. How much infrastructure would be lacking around that area? I just feel like globalization may help few in the beginning, but slowly everyone will be benefited in the long run.

Look what non-globalization has done in countries in Eastern Europe or Africa. They need to embrace capitalism and globalize their countries. Now that industrialization has happened, colonization is long gone, globalization is the next step the world as a whole needs to take. Globalization brings the world to our backyard. It makes us all secular. And God knows that the Americans need to be secular, they don't know that there are more countries in the world than just themselves.

The process may be long, but in the end social justice will be found.

Globalization may have its bad sides, but that's the only way we are going to be able to band together and fight the other problems we have on this earth: poverty and global warming.

Entry on Dialogue Practise

Dialogue in our social context class is not always exactly dialogue. Sometimes it goes off on rants, arguments, side subjects, and rarely stays on topic to answer the question at hand. But who are we to blame, this is a relatively new experience to us students, we never really know what to do and where to take the subject. Everyone as they ready the paper or watched the movie had one or two important things that they wanted to discuss to the whole class to show that they understood something. Well when you have a class of 50, where about only 20% of the class actually does speak, that's about 10 people with 20 ideas that they want to relay to the class. With this many ideas, and not that much time, the true topic at hand never seems to get discussed and "dialogued" properly. I don't want to blame anyone on this because we still are new at dialoguing like I previously mentioned. It is great to get our ideas out, but we need to focus in more on what we are being asked to do. I am a prime example of what I just described. After watching, reading or observing, I always set a couple of things in my head to say to the class. I want to get my idea out. Well, if I'm not the first one speaking, then no matter what the person says before me, I'll nod or disagree, and then go off onto my tangent and the way that I wanted my conservation to go. In this regard, I did not accomplish the task of dialogue whatsoever. I may have said something witty, or smart or something that had nothing to do with what we were doing, which deterred us from our goal.

With so many people in the class, even if our dialogue takes us somewhere, with a few good exchanges, it is very hard to keep everyone on track. And what about all of the people who never have spoken in class or have spoken once or twice; Those people could do very well by saying what they actually felt or observed. They could break out of their shell and give their insights but with a big class like that, the task of speaking in front of everyone may seem a little daunting.

The purpose of this exercise is to not only hear what others have to say, but understand and build on what they have said. We need to open other people's eyes to other perspectives and also allow them to look at themselves in a third person view to better understand their selves. I don't know if I'm making too much sense here, but these exercises open up a lot of subjects, and evoke feelings into people. Now what these feelings do I'm not so familiar with but it could have positive effects on the mind and how we think. This is the role of dialogue I believe.

In class, we have had some semblance of dialogue, but it should go a little bit further than that. We need to start involving more people and get them out of their comfort zone. Get someone that may be unprepared to speak to voice his or her opinion. Usually it's the same people in class talking and we do not want that. We want people who don't usually talk to hear what they have to say and the insights that they have to give on the current topic. Let's toss around a ball randomly and whoever catches says a few comments on the task at hand. Or even better, everyone should go one by one and give just a few thoughts maybe 15-30 seconds long. Whatever we have to do to get people involved is what we have to do. We need a more serious moderator who will do a better job to keep us on track and initiate dialogue when things are not going well. We need to be comfortable with silence and allow a minute of silence between segments to make sure that people are aware and that they can think without others talking in their ear.

I think we need to eliminate arguments whenever they arise and give 30 second time limits to anyone on any subject they are talking about. Watch less movies and do more games is something that I would really enjoy doing. Let's do icebreaker games even though we may know each other. Let's get some communication going, let's see some smiles in people's faces. Isn't this what this class is about. Learning, but without all the stress associated with endless assignments, midterms and finals. This class should be fun and treated as such. It should not however, be goof-off time and time to stray from topics. We have to stay organized.

I have a couple of questions. Why have we not had that many guest speakers come in for 30 minutes or so. I'm sure that many people in the area around Montreal will be more than happy to come and talk to us about their initiatives or what they do. I would be interested to get other people's perspective and also for us to discuss that further.


Intuitive understanding of purpose behind exercise
Feelings on actual experience in class
Experience regarding a shift in perspective (or not) as a result of these practices
Your recommendations of how to improve
Your questions

Social Responsible Investing

Just when you thought being eco-friendly meant not only changing your light bulbs and composting trash, but also living sustainable lives and the move towards corporate social responsibility, another facet of environmentalism comes out. This is how I felt when I found out about socially responsible investing. I didn't think about it before but for us to embrace the environment and ensure its safety for the future, every part of business has to be sustainable. I don't mean to make a plug about your business, Ms. Gladu, but your business which is very capital intensive might not have gone through without some responsible investing. Quite frankly, responsible investing is what starts the dream altogether, and it also keeps it going for the future of a greener planet.

I have a quick comment to make about part of the article. The part where she gives us a glance at SRI around the world. To be honest, I don't know how much that actually helps. I mean we're 2008 now and I haven't heard of these investments and how they have made everything better.

I agreed with her comment about educating students about responsible investing. I just have one comment on that, teach CURRENT CEO's too, they need to know this stuff too. I mean we are the next generation, but they will be working for as much as 30 more years too.

Last comment I promise I will make it short!! Let's get Brenda Plant to come in our classroom sometime soon and get her to talk to us!! Her business is really close to school!!

Voluntary Simplicity

Singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, avoidance of external clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life.

That is one of the most concise definitions I have seen in a long time. It really set the mood for this article. It is kind of a shame that I will miss class today because I would have liked to hear what the other classmates thought about this paper.

Oh, and by the way, NOOOOO! While reading this article about voluntary simplicity, the first thoughts that came to my head were of Henry David Thoreau, whose want for simplicity pushed him to live life in the woods as it told in his book Walden Pond. I guess the author had him in mind as well while writing this piece.

Another great quote I read, "Poverty is involuntary and debilitating while simplicity is voluntary and enabling." I like how he says things. But he's right, poverty is so nasty and sad; as residents of Montreal we see that on a daily basis.

Other observations in this article: the gap between rich and poor, and how that gap is widening so significantly every single day.

How lucky was I to be brought into a great home and upbringing. I mean I'm not a big gambling buff but if theres 6 billion people on earth and 1.2 billion live in absolute poverty, I dodge a bullet when I was born. Others aren't so lucky. The picture below represents the slums in a town, while the rich flourishing skyscrapers of wealth and capitalism provide a good backdrop for the people living in the shanties.

Ethics and Decison Making

Been There, Read That!


There we go with another short paper on ethics and business morals once again. How many different papers do I have to read about this!?! Well actually I took a ethics course for philosophy so maybe that's why I'm feeling the slight overkill.

I did enjoy a novel example of moral ambiguity in business, in how a firm makes decisions. The Intel case provides examples that Intel only replaced defective chips if the user was savvy enough to catch the defect. But the average person who uses Intel chips in in their computers have very little knowledge of how they work so they wouldn't get the newer chips. That is an example of an ethical dilemma of immoral acts or inaction.

To follow a new trend in our readings, we saw yet another example of firms doing good things in ethics. Hewlett-Packard has standardized rules in which their employees and upper management follow. The ethics are ingrained in their corporate culture making ethical decision making easier for employees.

To summarize, I just want to point out something that this article made me think about. A lot of times your decision to either perform or not perform an immoral and/or unethical act very much depends on whether you think you will get caught or not. That always gets me.

The Caring Capitalist: Managing without managers

"The organizational pyramid is the cause of too much corporate evil because the tip is too far from the base." -Ricardo Semler

Of course this is one of the few and far between examples of corporations where workers have a say in many organizational procedures. It's a little bit sweet to hear of these things, because you don't hear very much of this going on in the business world. Of course I'm talking about employee involvement and democracy in the decision making of the firm.

I mean, how often do you hear of the employees able to overturn the boss on if the company should acquire another company or not. This kind of makes me think: If more companies were like this, would they be run a lot better, and corporate greed eliminated?

Semler was able to drastically change the concept of management and turn it literally upside down. It's kind of far fetched when you're reading it, and personally I won't fully believe it until I actually see it in my eyes. But in the back of my head, isn't this the kind of place everyone dreams of working at? Profit sharing, no dress code, setting own salaries and hours, having the right to make company decisions. This is really cool. Abolishing rules and regulations would not work at a company with the average worker. Semler and his partners most likely hire only the most responsible people

Common sense in the workplace is something that Semler puts a big emphasis on. I mean doesn't that just make common sense! haha, well I feel like a lot of companies don't do this at all...

The most important thing I got from this article is the Woolly Mammoth example: dont' get caught up in too much planning of tasks, delegating, authority sharing. Act with INSTINCT; hunters and gatherers didn't have days to plan a mammoth attack, when they saw it they had to go hunt it immediately. Or else they die.

Making Money Like the Bee

"People are now more able to compartmentalize their lives, so that they can have different values at home than they do at work"

It's not very surprising to do readings for social context and seeing that dialogue is such an important part of a sustainable and environmentally friendly. I feel like a lot of the success stories in this article featured people that were able to clearly communicate their ideas, study and research as groups and make organizational decisions made in sync with the environment and the business in mind. A member of Collins Pine observed, "any kind of dialogue generates some level of trust. You have to vent back and forth; but you learn." This article introduced some people that didn't have this slogan in head: Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.


This journey to sustainability is never ending

Judy Wicks' restaurant (the person attributed to the pull quote) White Dog Cafe, is a business leader whose mission statement is fundamentally made not with profits in mind, but with the well being of its employees, its customers, its community and most importantly the environment.

She made a really good comment and that made me think. I always wondered why head of organizations acted the way they did. Weren't they brought up with good family values and learned to be responsible for their own actions? Wicks remarked that these business leaders are able to compartmentalize themselves so that they can walk into work in the morning and check their morals and ethics at the door. I feel like this is something that needs to be quickly changed as the first decade of the new century is slowly winding down. Throw away these preconceived notions about Corporate Social Responsibility, because companies don't do enough, but still call themselves a company that follows CSL.

A couple of things I remarked about some businesses featured here:

1. These companies most of the time sacrifice some profits and competitiveness to become more sustainable.

2. The companies who are the most sustainable are not rightfully rewarded by the government or by legislation. Actually, they are hampered and disadvantaged facing more regulations and less tax credits.

3. Revolutionary and sustainable design costs more up front, but pays itself back.

4. Companies, which I believe this needs to be changed, do not adopt environmentalist views and socially responsible ways until only after their reputation has been tarnished.

5. Aside from this article I've noticed that emulating nature in many ways is an environmentally sound practice.

Imperialism 101: A necessary evil?

First and foremost, I just wanted to say that I did not like this article much at all. Yes, it was instructive in the sense that I learned where the word "slave" came from. No really, I didn't know that slave came from the Slavs that toiled over the land Charlemagne ruled over.

<-----See Charlemagne helping little kids. Medieval PR?!?

Okay, so I decided to go against the grain on this one. And since I am going to write what my mind thinks, and not what will get me a grade, I am going to say that I am FOR imperialization, or at least some forms of it. Let me kind of reflect over those thoughts.

I think imperialism is good, otherwise we'd still be hunters and gatherers, we would not share technological secrets or have capital to undertake massive projects.

Imperialism was necessary to get to where we are today. Now I won't say that the Holocaust was necessary, or that Russian Gulags helped us become industrialized. No, I think those are atrocious acts by evil men. Although I do say that empires needed to expand, gather resources and enrich themselves to accomplish their lofty goals. Without greed, the de Medici family would never have become patrons of the arts, and funded artists with masterpieces such as Michelangelo and Raphael.

The alluded to the Natives having social customs that were "more gracious and humane" and that they were more happy and peaceful. Was he there when the Mayans and Aztecs grew their civilizations in South America? They were some of the most cutthroat and aggressive civilization to have lived. Had we given them guns, armour, and ships that could sail oceans, they might have done the same thing.

the first thing that crawled when I Googled Aztecs--------->


Oh and that comment he said, "they need to be given back their land and labour so that they might work for themselves and grow food for their own consumption". Okay, well we will take out all the infrastructure that Britain put up in India, and then let them fend for themselves. Look at what happened to Guinea when France gave them independence.

And the author is saying that the companies in North America, Europe and Japan are reaping all the third world profits. Hold on a minute, Japan was on the verge of becoming a third world and backwards country with samurai swords and their bushido code. But they worked relentlessly and worked together to become industrialized.

Countries might have become more industrialized than others, and those countries' time will come. And in 2008 and beyond, countries need and WILL be industrialized in a Sustainable way.

I don't want to make enemies, and in 250 words I feel like this post is all over the place and rantish, but that is my opinion. I don't think we would be here today without some form of imperialism or capitalist imperialism. And if you think imperialism is the worst thing ever, and it should have never occurred, let me hand you a hoe and and an ox and you can go till your own land, trade for your goods, and make your own clothing.

Six Sins of Greenwashing

The first idea that came to my head after reading this article is why are there so few reliable, sustainable companies. Well actually according to the study, less than 1% of products are actually reliable and sustainable. This is 2008, why are companies still thinking like only have to do something if another company does it? I feel like this is their mindset: Oh I need to make a claim for the environment in my product so that I can stay competitive. Stop being REACTIVE and start being PROACTIVE! Didn't your momma tell you any different?

With so many fibbers and sinners out there making false claims about the environmental safety of their products, what companies will actually go the extra mile to make REAL claims? Similar to coin debasing in the Roman and Medieval times the bad and misleading product claims are pushing all the good and genuine product claims out of circulation. How are we consumers supposed to react to this examination by TerraChoice?

Have I been walking around the grocery store like a chicken with its head cut off, buying green toilet paper, green detergent, and the like? I do not feel mislead or betrayed, however, I realize the need to be more vigilant when buying such products from now on.

<---I pay more for this toilet paper... it's only made of 20% post consumer recycled content!

One thing I remarked while reading this that I thought of before was the Sin of Vagueness. I thought about this before when eating at McDonald's. Their burgers are 100% beef and 100% natural.. does that mean that they just throw the whole beef in the blender and make burgers out of that. Haha! sorry it's a little gross but that's the image I got into my head. aaaaaaaawhat is 100% beef?!? ----->

To make a few closing remarks, the box on multi-attribute vs single-attribute claims struck
me: Do companies sit around the board room trying to come up with one environmental attribute to add selling points to their products? Do they think that doing one thing is enough? I feel like being environmentally friendly is more than DOING THE BARE MINIMUM! My last point is that environmentally friendly doesn't only mean the product itself, it's the whole life cycle of the product: so there you go organic food buyer, how do you think your food is delivered: 18-wheeler trucks..