Earlier, in response to an article on elitism and bottled water, I wrote about my perspective on mass consumerism. Shortly after, I ran into this exhibit by Chris Jordan of Seattle. He basically tries to put the statistics of American consumption into photos which demonstrate the scale of our consumption. For example, the photo at left is of plastic bottles: every 5 minutes, we in the US consume 5 million such bottles. Even more amazing to me is that every day we discard nearly half a million cell phones. That means that roughly every two years, every person in the US gets a new cell phone. Amazing!

I personally think that some of this is intentionally encouraged by companies. The more disposable their products are, the more we will buy. I don’t think there is any reason to go through so many cell phones. But, there are two factors that encourage us to do so: first, they break (their lifetime is limited) and second, new features are introduced that make us want to upgrade.

You would think that the first is natural. After all, things break. But, my wife’s cell phone, a flip phone, was cracking near the hinge area. We took it in asking if we could get it replaced. Of course, we couldn’t because our contract wasn’t up yet and we hadn’t purchased insurance. But we told the guy behind the counter that she wasn’t doing anything extraordinary, that it was just wearing down from regular use. He said that it was “planned obsolesence”. This means that the company is intentionally designing the cell phone with a shorter lifetime than is really necessary. They could design a better and longer lasting product. They intentionally design a poorer product so that it will break after too long, so that we will have to buy a new one.

The second is a bit more subtle. I think often new features are added only to get us to buy a new model. It isn’t that we need the new features. But I think it plays into our psychology. Especially if someone else buys the fancy new model, then we want it. There was a study I read about recently that posed the following question to a bunch of people: if the price of everything were the same in these two scenarios, which would you prefer: to make $50K while everyone else makes $25K, or to make $100K while everyone else makes $200K. The second one is better in an absolute sense, while the first is better in a relative sense. Most people pick the first scenario. Their view of wealth isn’t based on how much they have, but how much they have relative to everyone else. I think the fancy new features in new products connects to the same human psychology.

I think our disposable colture is a large part of why we have so much waste. If things were designed and built to be more durable, companies might make less money, but the impact of our consumerism on our environment would be significantly less. I guess that would require a significant change in how our economy works, but I think it is a change worth thinking about.

In any case, check out Chris’ website and get a little bit better perspective on how much we consume.

One thing that confuses me about the whole same-sex marriage debate is the supposition that homosexuals are so different than heterosexuals. I don’t mean from the point of view that their sexual preferences are different. Rather, it is the view that homosexuality is a choice and that is the reason it is so “bad” that I don’t understand.

(Let me say that I don’t think that homosexuality is wrong regardless of whether it is a choice or not. I think people should be able to do what they wish as long as they don’t infringe on my right and ability to do what I wish.)

What I mean is that to view homosexuals as having a choice in their orientation is to some how think that their brain works completely differently than heterosexuals. And I mean differently in the sense that, as a heterosexual, I don’t feel I have a choice as to what gender I am attracted to. I am attracted to women, plain and simple. I didn’t choose to be attracted to women. That’s just the way I’m “wired”. However, it seems that the anti-same-sex marriage people believe that homosexuals are completely different and do have a choice. They aren’t wired to be attracted to the same sex, they choose to be.

It is this double standard I find confusing. And I don’t quite see why the gay community doesn’t point this out. It might be that they feel that it shouldn’t matter if it is a choice or not, they should have the rights to live the way they wish. And I can respect that.

But, I think that most people who are “anti-gay” are that way mostly because they fear things they do not understand, things that don’t make sense to them. When couched in this way, that their preferences are hard wired to some extent (just like mine are), I think some people at least would drop their opposition. It might not be for the right reasons, in some sense, but it might make things a little bit easier.

I personally believe that it won’t be long until it is definitely demonstrated that sexual orientation is very strongly genetic and that we have little “choice” in the matter. But, I am also of the camp that most of our personality is determined by genetics. There was a very interesting article in the last Scientific American about how our level of happiness is at due in part (about 50%) to genetics. I think that we will find that much of who each of us is comes to a great extent from our genes.

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.