Ideas and proposals for a just, sustainable and happy society – in the European Union and beyond
I identify two very different types of debt:
Debt towards human creditors is the most visible form of debt. It is recorded in public or private accounts, and is the purpose of active monitoring, in order to ensure that the debtor keeps a sustainable capacity to pay the creditor back. The rights of creditors are defended by national and international law.
However, debt towards humans is not as hard as what could appear prima facie.
(Figure: Media Respect Cube, displaying the level of respect of the receiver, per technical feature of the communication medium. The higher the score, the higher the respect. Author: Sergio Arbarviro, under licence Creative Commons)
(Follows the previous post)
Regarding now the technical medium, I would have the following considerations:
Social medium Facebook and “big data” firm Cambridge Analytica have broken the news in March 2018 when their methods of political manipulation in the electoral campaign of Donald Trump in 2016 were made public. Why is it that the revelations on the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica affair appear morally so unacceptable?
I would like here to suggest a method, based on the well-established layer-based model of the human brain, to trace a moral distinction between tools used in political communication.
The ultimate goal of public policy in the 21st century may be expressed in very simple terms: ensure good living conditions to the population – while respecting the 9 environmental planetary boundaries that set limits to our production and consumption (climate change; rate of biodiversity loss; interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading). Is this goal achievable? The answer is yes, because it has already been achieved by one country: Costa-Rica. The good news is: this achievement is the outcome of deliberate policies, not of mere chance.
Source of data in the image: World Bank, stocks traded, turnover ratio of traded shares.
When asked about who should govern companies, the most obvious answer seems to be: the shareholders. And the reason: because they are the owners. Period. Debate closed. Recent discussions about the increased role of other stakeholders, be they the workers, representatives of external interests such as those of the environment or of suppliers, are seen like nice add-ons, little more than an inflexion to a generally valid rule.
I disagree, and believe that the role of the shareholders in the governance of companies should be radically reconsidered.
Continue reading “The shareholders aren’t any more the most legitimate to govern companies”
The Swiss translator and then psychotherapist Claude Piron spent his 20 years of activity at the Department of Psychology of the University of Geneva understanding the psychology of international linguistic communication, of which he had a direct experience by working for 17 years at the United Nations Organisation (UNO) and at the World Health Organisation (WHO). He summed up his reflections in a book (unfortunately only in French and in Portuguese), “the language challenge”, which he summarised in a very concise video and in several articles (check those in English).
Claude Piron argues that the existing mainstream systems for international linguistic communication don’t work, and that the (definitely not mainstream, but efficient) alternative, the international communication language Esperanto, is the purpose of neurotic resistance. His main arguments are the following.
The automobile is one of the main components of the unsustainable “Western” lifestyle. It has structured the urban planning of our cities, and is responsible for 12 to 28% of the total environmental impacts of human activities (depending on the nature of the impact: climate change, eutrophication, acidification…) in a developed area such as the European Union1. As such, automobile manufacturing and use is consistently among the top 3 sources of environmental impact (whatever the nature of the impact), together with food and housing. This means that the reduction in Greenhouse Gases Emissions by 80 to 95% compared to 1990 levels in the EU that we are collectively committed to in order to remain under the 2°C limit in global warming is only possible by achieving a very sharp decline in the automotive usage – and production.
Continue reading “Why we need to manage the decline of the automotive industry – responsibly”
(Picture: Total capture of North Atlantic cod, from 1950 to 2000, in thousands of tonnes. Graphic by Epipelagic — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19281989)
For over 500 years, fishermen from Canada, but also from Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Germany) had been fishing the abundant banks of North Atlantic cod around Newfoundland in Canada. Pierre Loti, in his novel “an Iceland fisherman” published in 1886, describes the “myriads upon myriads of fish, all alike, gliding slowly in the same direction”, which could be seen immediately below the surface of the sea, “plainly distinguished through the transparency”, and illustrates the fantastic plenty of these cod banks, where fishermen just needed to drop their lines, see the cod biting the hooks, haul the lines, take the cod off the hooks, and throw the lines over and over again. A fisherman’s dream, explaining why boats travelled from Europe, thousands of kilometres across the Ocean, to participate in this bounty.
In his “State of the Union” speech of 13 September 2017, President of the Commission Jean-Claude Juncker expressed his “sympathy” for the idea of trans-national lists in the elections to the European Parliament. This is a courageous move, knowing the reluctance – to say the least – of many nationally-elected politicians towards a proposal that would make them obsolete overnight.
I consider Jean-Claude Juncker to be fundamentally right. The only alternative to populism is trans-national democracy, not the global ploutocracy that we currently are heading towards.
Continue reading “State of Union speech: time for trans-national democracy, at last?”
“The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone” was published in 2009. Written by [British epidemiologists and economists] Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, the book highlights the “pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption“. It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries [than in equal rich countries]. (Excerpt from the Equality Trust website launched by the authors, with links to further details on each of the “health and social problems” listed).
The man planting trees 
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