In his article The snob appeal of tap water, Daniel Gross describes how elite restaurants and consumers are now turning on bottled water and returning to tap water.  The motivation is that bottled water is bad for the environment, both in that water is shipped 1000s of miles, using petroleum for shipping, as well as the bottling of the water itself.  Gross calls this shift an elitist, snob thing.  The implication is that much of the reason that those-who-have are switching to tap water is because everyone can do bottled water and it no longer is special.  It is too pedestrian.  He also argues that it is often the case that the elites start blaming products they once considered theirs as bad e.g. for the environment once the masses start to consume them.  Bottled water is not the exception, but one more example in a long line of products that have been demonized once they became popular.

It seems to me, however, that this has nothing to do with the elites versus the masses.  Sure, the elites have their attitude and I’m sure they lament whenever something they thought was special and theirs becomes part of mass culture.  But, that the elites start demonizing the product when it becomes consumed by the masses is rooted in more than just some snobbish attitude.  It is a real cause for concern.

This is because any human activity is of relatively no consequence in the global scheme if only a few people do it (there are exceptions; maybe testing a nuclear bomb would be one).  If just myself and my good buddy next door drink bottled water, it won’t hurt the environment.  It won’t cause any ecological disaster.  It won’t force jobs to be moved overseas.  And this is true for just about anything we could do: have glorious water fountains in our back yards even in our drought conditions here in Santa Fe; be the first to have high-energy usage appliances; use riding lawn mowers for our small patch of grass; have a gas guzzling SUV.  The problems start happening when everyone starts doing these things.  It is the consumption habits of a society, of a large group of people, that begin to impact the economy and the environment.

The converse is true too, of course.  If just me and my neighbor switch out our incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, it won’t make much of a difference at all.  But if everyone in our town, our state, or our country do so, then we will see a dramatic change.

So, it isn’t so much an issue of who is doing the consuming in terms of elites versus masses; it isn’t that, once the masses start consuming a product it becomes demonized.  Rather, it is the scale of consumption which matters.  That is when it becomes a potential problem.  The role the elites play in all of this is that they are often the ones that can first afford the novelty of bottled water or SUVs.  However, once the masses get wind of these new products, they naturally demand access to the same products.  This is how a democratic society works.  In a democracy, we can’t limit the use of certain resources and products to a special class (except via price), so unless price stays prohibitive for a long time, the masses will demand access to those products just to reduce the divide between them and the elites.

Maybe the role of the elites in this needs to be modified so that they are more responsible with their own consumption, but that isn’t happening right now.  The elites who can use carbon offsets to keep polluting at a large rate are doing something that simply cannot be done on a nation-wide scale.  And neither can the space rides that some billionaires are taking right now.  The environment cannot sustain an economy in which everyone can take such rides.  The fuel usage and damage to the atmosphere won’t allow it.

The graphic is from Wage Peace and really has nothing much to do with the posting; I just thought it looked cool and was semi-relevant. 

While in London, a few of us found ourselves in a pub, chatting over a few pints. We had a really interesting discussion about the British monarchy and the powers of the queen. (Many interesting discussions do seem to occur in pubs.)

(As an aside, the photo shows the Crown Jewels of Britain. The big red stone is known as the Black Prince’s Ruby. In reality, it is not a ruby but a spinel, a mineral we study because of its radiation tolerance and potential applications in nuclear reactors and fusion tokamaks.)

The main jist of the conversation was what powers the queen had. It seems that she is the ultimate authority in Britain, with powers that trump even those of the prime minister. At least, this is what is in the law and there is no disputing this.

What was in dispute, at least by me, is if these powers are “real”. I mean real in the sense of can the queen use these powers? In theory, the answer is definitely yes. But in practice, can she really? It seems to me that if she ever tried to use the more powerful of the powers she has (as, for example, commander in chief of the military), a number of things might happen. Most Brits, I believe, feel they live in a democracy. As such, I think they expect that their elected officials make the decisions that affect the country (even the foolish ones like supporting Bush in Iraq). I think that these people, who nominally support the existence of the queen, would be pretty irked if she used her powers to over turn any decision made by parliament. It might be the last straw for a lot of people who would then demand the end of the monarchy.

It thus seems to me that the queen, while in reality having such powers, can’t use them as they might lead to a “revolution” and/or the end of the monarchy. It thus strikes me that her powers are really useless and she has no power at all.

Of course, the Brits at the table argued the opposite, which I found somewhat amusing. They all seemed to feel that if the queen did such an act, did something completely against what parliament decided, that the people would merrily support her actions. They felt that the queen was a check against the parliament and the self-interest of elected officials. They thought the House of Lords served a similar purpose.

I can’t really understand this perspective. It seems that the basis for it is that the common man, and the people they elect to office, are dolts and need someone more enlightened to make sure they don’t get out of hand. This is where the nobility comes in. But, to me, these people have no authority other than the fact that their ancestors possibly hundreds of years earlier had gained power through either money or bravery on some battlefield. While this might have meant some of them were “worthy” of positions of influence, certainly their descendants have no such claims. I might see it as a decent idea if the people in these positions had gotten their based on merit, if they were the best scientists, business people, artists, etc that the country had to offer. But, they aren’t. They are just the ones that were born into some special office. I’ll never understand how the Brits can happily live in such a system.

In the end, we never reached any consensus or changed any minds. Maybe I got to understand their mind-set just a bit more, but I’m not sure. It is a bit too foreign to me. I prefer our system, even if it leads to a situation where someone like Bush is running amok in the world. While there is no check on him (other than Congress and the Supreme Court, though those have been less than willing to do their duties recently), the ultimate responsibility of his actions comes back to the people that elected him. Thus, we, the American people, have to bear that responsibility, learn from our mistakes, and do a better job in the future.