http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11999307
1 billion rich
1.5 billion in between
4 billion poor
(roughly, depending how you count, every time I put those numbers together I seem to do it differently.)
As the poor get wired, the internet becomes a poor place obviously enough. All kinds of dialogues about privilege etc. start there. I view social networking as the first line of defense that the rich are erecting against the poor - if you can’t just get random emails from half-starved peasants looking for food for their kids, because you only use Facebook, and those people aren’t on your friends list…
It’s the start of protecting people from reality online. Not good, but inevitable. It won’t be enough, there is far too much reality out there.
A substantial number of the world’s wealthiest people have moved their money out of stocks and bonds and into cash, the head of HSBC’s Swiss private banking unit said on Monday.
“The first half of 2008 has seen a notable change in client expectations and investment choices,” said Peter Braunwalder, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), the British-based bank’s main affiliate catering to the ultra-rich.
“Faced with inflation worries, volatile asset prices and sudden changes in exchange rates, a majority of investors have reduced their transaction volumes in equities, bonds, and structured products,” he told a news briefing in Geneva.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/many-wealthy-investors-shift-to-cash-hsbc-says/
The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward.
Bob Woodward’s book, “The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008,” came out Monday.
The program — which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — must remain secret for now or it would “get people killed,” Woodward said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.
“It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have,” Woodward said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/09/09/iraq.secret/index.html
http://www.akvo.org/blog/?p=151
Short, what-the-heck-is-this-thing movie brief.
Paritcularly notable for the amazing screen cap of Kiva.org’s homepage on a day when they were full - every loan they had to give was fully funded, there was no place to put more money.
Astonishingly hopeful for the whole interaid enterprise.
Now the central bank needs an infusion of capital. Central banks can, of course, print more money, but that would stoke inflation. Instead, the People’s Bank of China has begun discussions with the finance ministry on ways to shore up its capital, said three people familiar with the discussions who insisted on anonymity because the subject is delicate in China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/business/worldbusiness/05yuan.html
This is how entire populations get starved to death. First move them off their land, making them dependent on the global economy, then if food prices spike, they die.
In none of these places are the needs of local residents taken into account. In Ghana, BioFuel Africa wrested away land clearing and usage rights from a village chief who could neither read nor write. The man gave his consent with his thumbprint. The weekly newspaper Public Agenda felt reminded of the “darkest days of colonialism.” The Ghanaian environmental protection agency eventually put a stop to the clear-cutting, but only after 2,600 hectares (6,422 acres) of forest had been cut down.
…
In a recently published study on the “Biofuel Industry in Tanzania,” journalist Khoti Kamanga of the University of Dar es Salaam warns against the side effects of energy plantations. The population, Kamanga writes, is usually uninformed, while the cultivation of energy plants usually goes hand-in-hand with forced resettlement. According to Kamanga, it is very likely that ethanol production will also affect food prices in Tanzania, with the country’s dependency on food imports growing even further.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2008/gb2008098_506787.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_global+business
Here’s the bitter irony of this situation.
Credible studies show that with plausible technology developments, biofuels could supply some 30% of global demand in an environmentally responsible manner without affecting food production. To realize that goal, so-called advanced biofuels must be developed from dedicated energy crops, separately and distinctly from food.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/435
Oil demand rises at roughly 2% per year globally, so even with a very optimistic take on biofuels, all of this human suffering that will be caused by the biofuels push buys us 15 years of stability before it either erodes food supply or simply tops out with no more biofuels available.
Compare with the savings on fuel efficiency - reasonably 50% of current oil consumption - and imagine the money going into efficient vehicles.
The exception to all this, of course, is biofuels from saltwater algae grown in desert tanks. That could work, seems to be very scalable in theory, and is highly promising as a long term solution to liquid transportation fuel needs.
http://www.algalturfscrubber.com/biomass.htm is where you read about those.
No land clearances for biofuels, please. People are going to get killed and not a few of them, if that happens. Land clearances are generally the start of really violent and nasty revolutions, and Africa’s a primed powderkeg for a phase transition from nation states to tribalism across at least half of the continent.
That will be bad. There will be war, there will be genocide, there will be horror. Land clearances are precisely the kinds of activities that push the scales towards holocaust. It’s just asking for disaster.
STOP!
Consider: My niece was born in April (woohoo!) She was born on American soil. This means she’s American, and, adjusting for inflation, she can expect to be personally on the hook for more than $65,000 in federal debt the day she starts her first high school McJob at 14.
…
My niece was born into Original Debt. If Original Sin is what dooms us to death, Original Debt is what dooms us to taxes–why shouldn’t the two universal constants both begin at birth, after all? It worked for feudalism, after all.
You really have to read the rest of this to get the full depth of the argument. The impact, though… if we imagine an entity other than a government which simply said “ok, your kid owes us this much just for existing… we’ll take payments every year for the rest of her life…”
Brrr….. feudalism indeed. Anyway, read the rest here:
http://bhuga.net/2008/09/original-debt