An Invisible Chain of our Time

by Iam Willgreen

can do as Stanislaw Lem did, write the future ironically with good mood, laughing at ourselves, and understand and recognize our current ignorance, our current sight of modern towns, our current acceptance of as nasty substances such as those we digest, absorb and breathe daily.

  Rectify and correct attitudes.

  It is extremely rare to find a farmer who not recognizes that never was the main beneficiary of this agriculture; even they know what happened. A lot of them continue making the same and thinking: "I am old, the struggle will be for the following”: their sons, who could be agrarian engineers, suited mentally to new high-productivity techniques. The harvesting, as such way for eating, the one of two basic needs we all have, has become globally in a pure business, in a hard, nasty, obscene and inhuman act.

  That is what should be taught and learnt in the Universities in joint with other classes as like productivity and programming. That is learning, learning the reality.

  Are you living in the North hemisphere? How much of you would yell if you could not feed your children? Ok, that is happening really far your home. The price of food supplies was the key for have done reach the market to this situation. Do not rely in these subtle stats which are like toys: 1/5 of population does not know what will go on tonight, if they go see the sunshine; 1/4 of population do not know when they will lose something, perhaps their lands, perhaps their lives, perhaps their home, perhaps an arm.

  And all it because every resource which might be source of work, is actually source of business in the world, and are a spot to control in some way. And all the North inhabitants are agreeing and accomplishing with this practice. It is the reason for the low price of minerals, energy and foods that we obtain, barring some sources of oil smartly managed by their owners (where this is done) and despite the bad way they are spending it. Again, it is a pity, and it is a shame.

  But is not a scandal: this shocks nobody.

  In our sort of development, the security of ownership has turned out in anything, at least there where the properties are waiting its new owners, all of these in Africa. How is it possible? Clearly that is the road marked by an ancient deal, after the WWII. Africa, and also the Central America and South America, is a huge deposit, a giant warehouse of goods, assorted woods, minerals, animals, lands, oil, water... and of course also cheaper labor force, and will be exploited in a proper pace. Now is the time for Africa. It is not a new idea, and it already was checked: Russia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, have had the cheaper workers, the more extended lands, and the bigger productions by man and year, so it is the way for new projects, this kind of devastating development. Furthermore, unfortunately the cooperation has become in a bow from where launch the proper prospecting for finding new places to make business. The factories will be relocated year after year to back and forth, here and there, either the desert or the mountain, wherever it be cheaper. But never where it could be safer: wherever it is, the risky activities always are risky activities.

  10. A brothers Grimm tale called economy.

  Things that are free everywhere, at all time.

  An accountant, who was working for a former smuggler, once said me: “whatever you want to do later with the accounts, you need to point whatever happens, everything makes economic sense: and, if you miss some pointers, the accounts will not go well”. It is true, one exception could be this points that belong to nobody, that are commons. Nobody includes them into accounts.

  The way we behave has been very indicative of what we have considered since ever traditionally common resources, at least until they have stopped being free resources. This applies to forests that were not productive: waters near our facilities; the strip away from the coast and even the coast; aquifers; wetlands considered "useless and unproductive”; the same air; the soil that no was plowed; the soil of the cities, and of course every place or distant resources and unguarded.

  As the students of Economics and Business digest while they study the “dynamics” of the economy, business and finance, naturally they assume that all this is usual, whatever you do, whenever the resulting benefit goes either to the company or to the administrator. The negative results that fall over the surrounding environ were considered as unforeseen or strange bugs, and only were seen as accidents when have harmed the health of people. Over the years, the first national Acts in the US initiated a slow condemnation of these incidents and accidents, as well as laws and agreements generated in 50 years, so that today the companies that stain or damage pay for it, at least in the rich countries. In spite of this, mentality has not changed in substance, has changed the risk taken to be fined or create problems with the society.

  On the surface, not at the bottom, remain unanswered the following questions: where society is benefited by it? The only value is the money? Where are recorded the losses on health, environment or resources? Nowhere never has been made any effort or attempt in this regard.

  I will tell you more about this question. A reasoning as cretin as soft, not only poor, hypocrite, cunning and without any hint of respect for people, is this one: how do we account for common goods such as air, and therefore air pollution, the value of air, water, soil, one species, etc.? I could reply easily, with a naive and humble calculation, asking the lower price ($1), pointing only real losses, as follows: is it fair to claim for the air, water and soils polluted, for each specie lost (at least 50 main species), for each great ecosystem that has been lost, for the health, the ruined and banned places as whole (there are at least ten important), the ruined seas as whole, each disease toxic proved (at least 20). Well, in this case, we would have 107 items, that multiplied by $1 make $107: these $107, multiplied by 7,000 million inhabitants, makes $749 billion. Could be it fair, by bottom? I am only starting to make calculations…

  This is my way to tell you and ask you this: when do you go to awake and see all that you have lost? You do not notice anything, do you? Now already you know what are the commons, things nobody notices, things that nobody claims, free goods, free losses.

  How some men do make that things be astronomically valuable.

  First of all, we must recognize some issues things that are squeaking: how is it possible that the western citizens have now earnings between 7-14 times greater than which have had the former generation of grandparents? Only petrol and machines cannot explain it, but by the way the people consumes and trades with things. Although you do not like, it has not sense, nor good end.

  One issue that turns out to be really intriguing for me (I may be a weird soul) is the appearance or increase in value of things until levels quite astronomical. I keep wondering again and again how is this possible? How beginning from simple things as soils, cotton, cows, wood, emerge other things that also are simple (but specialized), and others more complex, but more ahead on the way, you just see things or services which finally reach an astronomical value?

  One day I suspected the answer where I never supposed it could be, the greed as a mark of modernity. Over this, there are brimming words like are growth or development, and its sum: thrive. Greed is an individual portion of terrain where sow the complicity of others, which can be split into percentages, in commissions for the covetous and for whom are offering. Thus arises the value of some things in the world, those of astronomical value, which no sense could be related to anything that really exists.

  (How the value of things increases as the services and goods are more complex, for some groups)

  We could doubt, referring to the picture above, where to put the word security: perhaps the only “derived service” which should be between the “essential services,” but according to our real world, is this one. Then, the shape of the pyramid would change.

  With some cynicism, we could use physics to try to explain this, if possible. However, unless it has changed the first law of thermodynamics (I guess it continues fulfilling the principle of conservation of energy which says that “the energy can be transformed but cannot be created or destroyed”), is pointless how are there so m
uch money in the world that does not corresponds to the value that could be obtained from all unprocessed and processed resources at one moment, which are the basement, the foundation, the bottom floor. In many points along the economic chain, the value is being multiplied by some factors freely (I would say happily), is handled by those who have control over the access to resources. The ecology shows that this kind of processes do not take place nowhere, are not possible on Nature, economically it could mean for Nature a burst of one population over the rest, imploding finally the whole. We understand easily that an inverted pyramid of population has not future, but seems to be never applied when referring to money.

  I like math, because math show us a lot of things, and all can be universally applied if have a mathematical basis: and math show two worlds of efforts: by one side, a big part of the world follows the math’s laws, when the transforming of resources and the value of goods produced is related to the effort made throughout the process; however, by other side at the economical and political top of society, the human processes seem to be rid of that law, at least for some processes and some humans. In our economy, not only basic goods and secondary